Oral Answers to Questions

HOME DEPARTMENT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Simon Mudada

Edward Leigh: If he will determine the current immigration status of Mr. Simon Mudada, further to correspondence between the Minister for Immigration and Asylum and the hon. Member for Gainsborough; and if he will make a statement.

Liam Byrne: I have written again to the hon. Gentleman on 8 June to provide an update on this case.

Edward Leigh: Will the Minister reconsider his position on this case? Mr. Mudada is a minister of religion and an opposition activist working for the Movement for Democratic Change. He has applied twice, and he has been in this country for five years.
	I want to appeal to the Minister on urgent compassionate grounds. Mrs. Mudada, who has been to my surgery twice, has not seen her four children, the youngest of whom is nine years old, for almost five years. They were being looked after by their grandmother in Harare, but she is now dead. This is surely an urgent, compassionate case. The Minister said to me in his letter that the children can apply for entry clearance, but until Mr. Mudada's status is cleared up, they cannot. Whatever the Minister's views about whether Mr. Mudada is a genuine asylum seeker, he should clear the matter up so that that mother can see her children.

Liam Byrne: I have made it my policy not to discuss individual cases on the Floor of the House, but I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss the case if he would find it convenient. Generally, it is the policy of the Border and Immigration Agency to enforce decisions when an independent judicial process has concluded that somebody does not have the right to be in this country, and that it is safe for them to go home. Obviously, I look with particular care at cases from Zimbabwe, given the despicable nature of the regime there.

Foreign Prisoners (Deportation)

David Heathcoat-Amory: What recent discussions he has had with the Ministry of Justice on measures to deport foreign prisoners following their release from prison.

Liam Byrne: Discussions are going on all the time.

David Heathcoat-Amory: Last year the Prime Minister told the House that
	"it is now time that anybody who is convicted of an imprisonable offence and who is a foreign national is deported."—[ Official Report, 3 May 2006; Vol. 445, c. 960.]
	However, the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006 explicitly rule out deporting people with criminal convictions to the European economic area. Will the Government stop talking tough about deporting criminals while exporting the powers to do so? Or will the Government retrieve those powers to deport criminals and enable the Prime Minister to fulfil the pledge that he made to the House?

Liam Byrne: I know that the right hon. Gentleman will have looked very closely at those immigration regulations, referred to as statutory instrument No. 1003; however, if he looks at them again he will notice that they say no such thing. The Government are still able to consider all deportation cases, whether the individual is from the European Union or not.
	May I take the right hon. Gentleman's mind back to the free movement of people directive, which was laid before the House? I do not think that any party prayed against it, and therefore I assume that it has all-party support, if not the support of all Members. That directive sets out our policy for deporting people from the EU. We will consider people from the EU for deportation if their offences are serious, and I anticipate that we will deport a good 300-plus this year alone.

David Kidney: I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for keeping the promise that he made to the House on Report of the UK Borders Bill to review the Home Office policy on informing the victims of crime of the deportation of foreign nationals from prison. When does he anticipate the new policy being in place?

Liam Byrne: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the time that he has taken to brief me on the troubling circumstances of the individual case about which he addressed the House at some length earlier this year. If we are to rebalance the criminal justice system and the immigration system in favour of the victim, it is important that we disclose information when we are able to do so. I hope to put in place a new policy to do so on request from right hon. and hon. Members within the next month.

Elfyn Llwyd: The Prison Officers Association is on record as saying that it is very concerned that when foreign nationals have completed their sentences, that is the point at which people consider what to do with them. Frequently, they remain in custody for two or three months, which is absolutely wrong on human rights grounds and everything else. Will the Minister assure the House that the planning of what to do with them is started well before their sentences expire?

Liam Byrne: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary told the House last year that we would bring forward considerably the point at which we consider a foreign national prisoner's case for deportation. We now routinely consider cases six months before the sentence comes to an end. It is because we now consider cases much earlier in the process that we have almost doubled the rate at which we send foreign national prisoners back to where they came from.

Keith Vaz: I have raised the case of James Bishop with the Minister before. The person who killed my constituent was removed from this country before the trial took place. Will my hon. Friend confirm that he is having discussions with the Foreign Office as well as with the Ministry of Justice so that those who are removed will not be able to reapply for entry clearance, and that if they reapply it will be clear to entry clearance managers and entry clearance officers why they were removed from the UK, so they will not be allowed to return?

Liam Byrne: My right hon. Friend has previously raised the case with me; I have such discussions with my colleagues in the Foreign Office every fortnight. Crucial to making the progress he wants is the introduction of biometric visas in every visa post around the world. We have now introduced them in 67 countries and we already find that thousands of people are reapplying whom we know about through our records. That is why it would be such an error to shut down the biometric identification system in which the Government are investing.

Humfrey Malins: I sit in the London courts and an increasing number of serious crimes are being committed by people who come to the UK from the new EU states. Does the court have the power to order their deportation? Should it not have the power to do so?

Liam Byrne: In the case of EU nationals, the free movement directive sets the framework for the policy we have to adopt, but for foreign nationals more generally the provisions in the UK Borders Bill are exactly right and mean that people who commit a serious offence in this country will face the prospect of automatic deportation, and if they want to appeal against it they can do so from the country they came from.

Jim Sheridan: Can my hon. Friend assure the House that if foreign prisoners are held in any devolved part of the UK the devolved body will be consulted when they are being deported?

Liam Byrne: There are close arrangements for dealing with matters between devolved Administrations. Obviously the detention estate available in Scotland is run by the Border and Immigration Agency, but colleagues in the BIA in Scotland are in close day-to-day contact with officials from the Scottish Executive and the Scotland Office.

Damian Green: The Minister's attempts to reassure the House about the deportation of foreign prisoners are pointless unless he can give us accurate figures about how many former foreign prisoners are still at large in the UK and how many are still under lock and key. He may be aware that when I asked how many former foreign prisoners were in young offender institutions, the former prisons Minister, now the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, replied that the data are
	"not available without disproportionate cost".—[ Official Report, 8 February 2007; Vol. 456, c. 1093W.]
	If Ministers cannot say how many former prisoners are still locked up, the Minister needs to clarify whether the Government really do not know, which would be alarming, or know but will not tell us—which would be disgraceful. Which is it?

Liam Byrne: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was clear about the seven or eight key failings in the criminal justice system that resulted in the crisis of foreign national prisoners not being considered for deportation appropriately last year. One issue was the difficulty of identifying whether people in the criminal justice system are foreign nationals. To remedy that, we have set in train work with the police; pilots are under way and the lessons from them will be applied across the criminal justice system. Our determination to deport those who have no right to be in this country is clear, which is why we have invested extra resources and doubled the rate at which we are sending foreign national prisoners home.

Detention without Charge

Alistair Carmichael: What his policy is on the period of detention without charge for terrorist suspects; and if he will make a statement.

John Reid: First, with your permission Mr. Speaker, I am deeply saddened to report to the House the death today of PC Jon Henry while on duty in Luton with Bedfordshire police. Tragic events such as his death highlight the dangers that police officers face day to day in their task of protecting the public. I have spoken with the chief constable of Bedfordshire police, Gillian Parker, and passed on my sympathies and those of the whole House to the friends, family and loved ones and colleagues in the police service of PC Jon Henry.
	I believe that events in the past 12 months have strengthened the case for extending pre-charge detention. However, I believe that we ought to seek broad agreement, if possible, on the way forward and have therefore opened consultations on the matter to see if a consensus can be reached.

Alistair Carmichael: I associate myself with the Home Secretary's very proper expressions of condolence with regard to Constable Henry and his family.
	When the Home Secretary consults on detention without charge, will he bear in mind the need to consult police and prosecutors in all parts of the United Kingdom? He may recall that his predecessor did not feel it necessary to speak to the Lord Advocate about that, and given the widespread concern in Scotland about the Prime Minister's dealings with Libya last week, will the Home Secretary promise me that this will not be another free gift to the Scottish National party?

John Reid: Yes, I will try to ensure that all those proprieties are observed, in the spirit as well as in the letter. I do not accept that there is anything improper about the proceedings over the past week or two, which was the premise of the hon. Gentleman's question. I agree with those elements of the Scottish press that say that this was more spin than substance, however effective the spin side might have been from the point of view of the First Minister. Nevertheless, it is right to remember that with such important issues we should carry out the fullest and widest possible consultation.

Jeremy Corbyn: In the Home Secretary's consultations over the period of detention without trial for terror suspects, will he bear in mind the fact that many of us feel that 28 days is already rather too long for detention without trial, and that the idea of extending the period to as long as 90 days could be counter-productive in gaining the co-operation and support of many in the country who wish to be part of the community rather than alienated from it? Detention for 90 days will not bring about the peace and justice that the Home Secretary wants, but will probably drive some people into the arms of those whose arms he would rather they were not driven into.

John Reid: It is always a difficult balance. I do not disguise my recognition that it is difficult for Members to balance the requirements to counter terrorism effectively, to fight it and to ensure national security with the need to ensure that when we strengthen powers we strengthen scrutiny appropriately, too. My hon. Friend says that people may have had misgivings last time we debated the matter, and that is true, but there was a majority view that given the new circumstances, a period of 28 days was justified. The events of the past 12 months have shown that to be correct. The consideration of one or two cases last August took 27 or 28 days—right up to the limit. There are about six examples of cases that took that long over the past 12 months. The case for the extension is strengthened. I remain persuaded of the case, but I recognise that others are not. That is why I am trying to consult as widely as possible to see whether we can reach a compromise and consensus.

Ben Wallace: The hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) referred to the counter-productiveness of extending detention without trial, especially in certain areas of the community, which could concern the ability to recruit sources. Has the Home Secretary received any representations from agencies involved in counter-terrorism that might be worried that it is already hard to recruit informers in the communities that pose a threat to us? If he has, does he recognise that that might be a result of the proposed legislation or the legislation that has already been implemented?

John Reid: It is always difficult to recruit people in the midst of a sharp struggle. That was the case in fighting republican terrorism and I have no doubt that it is difficult at present. On the other hand, we receive a lot of support from across the community. That is essential, because I have continually expressed the view from the Dispatch Box and outside the House that ultimately we will not defeat terrorism through the security apparatus. It is a necessary but insufficient means. The way to defeat terrorism is by bringing the community of this country together. It is at the grass roots, in the communities, in the streets, in the mosques and outside them, and in our universities that we will fight out the battle for values and ideas. The security apparatus is one dimension—but only one.

Anne Snelgrove: Acts of terrorism and the threat of terrorist attacks affect everyone in this country, not only those who sadly suffer the immediate effects of terrorism. Some of my constituents have said that they are concerned about travelling to London and other cities because they are afraid of terrorist attacks. Such attacks are an attack on our freedom. What plans does the Secretary of State have to consult members of the public, organisations, and the victims of terror? Does he believe that the balance should lie with the safety of the public or the individual freedoms of the terrorists?

John Reid: The ultimate right is the right to the preservation of one's life, because if we cannot protect individuals' lives, we cannot, by definition, extend to them the opportunity to exercise any other rights, given that they all depend on an individual's existence. I would have thought that that was self-evident. That is why, when balancing the rights of the 60 million individuals who make up the community, we must have a degree of proportionality. However, that is not reflected in at least one of the judgments of the European Court, the so-called Chahal judgment, which is why we will continue to contest and appeal against it.
	The key thing is to involve the whole community. Two groups of people on both extremes wish to divide the community. There are apologists for al-Qaeda who argue that this is essentially a war by everyone else on Islam, which is untrue. There are those on the extreme right of politics who argue that this is a war by Muslims on everyone else, which is equally untrue. Both those groups ought to be pushed to the fringes as we unite everyone in this country across communities and ethnic and religious backgrounds.

David Davis: On behalf of the official Opposition, I join the Home Secretary in paying condolences to the family and friends of PC Jon Henry. I am afraid that today's tragic events are a salutary reminder of the risks that policemen and women take on our behalf.
	May I crave your indulgence for a second, Mr. Speaker? I think that this will be the last Home Office questions that the Home Secretary will face. May I take this opportunity to wish him well? We have had our differences a number of times over the years, but at every turn I have always accepted that he has done what was in the national interest, in his judgment.
	The idea of allowing the police to interview terrorist suspects after they have been charged is put forward to allow a suspect to be charged earlier and to maximise the chance of conviction. That is less controversial than increasing the time of detention without charge and will represent a major increase in police effectiveness. Will the Home Secretary tell us why it has taken two years to implement the idea?

John Reid: Ideas such as post-charge questioning, the pre-charge extension of detention facilities and the question of intercept have a political, social and legal dimension and often require a great deal of thought and consultation. As it happens, in this case, the right hon. Gentleman has supported the measure for a considerable time. I took the decision that it could be introduced a while back, but I wanted that to take place alongside the introduction of a package of measures. I thought that some of those measures might be more controversial, which is why there has been a delay in bringing this forward.
	The right hon. Gentleman would be the first to urge me not to have knee-jerk reactions to events. When I came into my post, I did not want to bring in yet another series of new laws, because that would have been another ground for criticism. I hope that we will be given credit for delaying and thinking things through, after some scrutiny.

David Davis: I agree with the Home Secretary about wanting to avoid knee-jerk reactions. Reference has already been made to the attitude of some senior policemen to the effectiveness of gathering intelligence. Let me quote one:
	"the trust that exists between police and public is critical to all we do, and is absolutely vital in counter terrorism. It fundamentally affects the level of support, and of course intelligence that we receive from communities."
	As has already been said, the greatest risk of extending detention without charge is that it will act as a recruiting sergeant for terrorism and cause the flow of intelligence from the community to dry up. What has the Home Secretary done to assess the effect of the proposed increase in detention on the attitude of the minority communities?

John Reid: I agree entirely with the sentiments expressed by whoever made them.

David Davis: Peter Clarke.

John Reid: I guessed that it was Peter Clarke. If I remember correctly, those words were part of his comments in the Colin Cramphorn memorial lecture. I agree that when we consider every single measure, we must balance its short and longer-term effects on countering terrorism and its effects on keeping the community on side. That is a difficult job. For instance, I have said continually that I believe that members of the Muslim community in this country are the victims of terrorism twice over, first because they suffer like the rest of us when bombs go off, and when there are explosions and terrorist attacks, and secondly because they are at the front line of counter-terrorist measures. Of course we must always consider that. What I have relied on is a degree of scrutiny and judgment—that has taken some time—and the view of the police, as expressed officially. That view is not that the extension is inevitable or an absolute requirement; it is that the police can envisage circumstances in which it may become necessary to go beyond 28 days, and they therefore believe that I should raise the matter for consideration, inside and outside Government. I am therefore weighing in the balance the immediate effects and the possible consequences, and I lay great stress on the view of the police.

Arrest Statistics

David Amess: What recent assessment he has made of arrest rates by police officers.

Vernon Coaker: The information is not held centrally in the form requested, as arrests statistics are collected on a recorded crime basis only. Our focus is on police activity that tackles crime and brings offenders to justice. Since 2003, crime has fallen by 10 per cent. Since 2002, the rate of offences brought to justice has increased by 39.6 per cent., and sanction detection rates have increased from 19 per cent. in 2003-04 to 24 per cent. in 2005-06.

David Amess: In common with the majority of the British people, my experience has been very different from the position that the Minister sets out. After great effort on my part, I received a letter from the Metropolitan police telling me that the person who burgled my mother's home—she is in her 96th year—asked for 1,396 offences to be taken into account when he was brought to justice at the age of 19, under Operation Wipeout. Does the Minister think that the 19-year-old who burgled my mother's house is the cleverest thief who ever existed, or would he agree that it is an absolute disgrace that those offences went undetected for so long?

Vernon Coaker: We are all appalled by cases such as that involving the hon. Gentleman's mother, and we all want people who burgle—particularly those who burgle an elderly, frail, vulnerable woman in her own home—to be brought to justice. That is why we have undertaken a whole range of measures to ensure that more people are brought to justice, and to make sure that when people burgle homes, they are brought before the courts and sentenced appropriately. As regards people who commit less serious offences, we have introduced fixed penalty notices and sanction detection rates to try to encourage police officers to bring more people to justice, and to ensure that more offenders are brought before the courts, both for the kind of serious crime that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and for less serious offences.

Madeleine Moon: Crime in my constituency of Bridgend is at a four-year low. Auto crime, violent crime and criminal damage are down, but as the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) says, there is a problem with burglary. My local police force has found that the hot weather increases the problem, as people leave windows open and doors unlocked. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a responsibility on the public to protect themselves from crime, especially during the current heat wave, by ensuring that windows and doors are locked?

Vernon Coaker: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Of course people have a responsibility to protect their own property, and of course they should lock doors and windows and take all the other sensible measures that we should all take; but alongside that, we need to send out a clear message that burglary is a serious crime, and that we expect burglars who are caught to be charged, put before the courts, and dealt with appropriately. Although it is of course sensible for people to protect their homes and do what they can, we need to send out the clear message that burglary will not be tolerated.

Owen Paterson: Last Monday, a reply by the Under-Secretary to a question I had tabled showed that the number of traffic officers declined from 7,525 in 1998 to 6,511 in 2005, which is a drop of more than 1,000 in seven years. Does he consider, as many criminals use vehicles, that that will help or hinder the arrest rate?

Vernon Coaker: The hon. Gentleman will know that the figures he quoted are last year's figures. The latest figures show an increase in the number of road police. He will know, too, that we take road policing very seriously, which is why, for the first time, we included it in the national community safety plan, which is an important step forward. Automatic number plate recognition systems are being used successfully by a large number of forces, so the message on roads policing is: policing the roads is important, because it helps to disrupt criminals who have to travel. I agree with him on that, and we have taken steps to deal with the problem.

Brian Jenkins: My hon. Friend will know that many hon. Members, myself included, would like the arrest rate in our constituencies to go down. We would like the crime rate, too, to fall rather faster. What is the correlation between the arrest rate and the crime rate? Has he done any work on that, and which police force has the highest correlation?

Vernon Coaker: On the question of the individual police force, I will have to write to my hon. Friend, but he has raised an important issue. The fact of the matter is that where the number of arrests goes up, there is a correlation with the crime rate. Obviously, we want to drive the crime rate down, and crime reduction correlates with increased police activity on the streets. Alongside the number of arrests in an area, it is important to have a visible police presence on the street, which is why the roll-out of neighbourhood policing is significant. The additional measures that we have introduced such as fixed penalty notices and penalty notices for disorder give the police another option apart from arrest when dealing with crime on the streets. As I said, there is a range of options available to the police, which they can use as appropriate on the street when dealing with criminals and crime.

Nicholas Clegg: May I endorse the expressions of condolence to the family, friends and colleagues of PC Jon Henry, following his terrible death today?
	Just as important as arrest rates is what happens after arrest. Is the Minister aware that figures revealed by the BBC today show that 8,000 sexual offenders have been released on caution. That is only the tip of the iceberg, however, as there was a 160 per cent. increase in the number of cautions issued for violent offences in the same period. Does the Minister agree that that is a grave affront to the basic principle that justice needs not only to be done but to be seen to be done, and that it is a direct consequence of the Government's reckless expansion of so-called summary justice and the bombardment of the police with endless illogical targets?

Vernon Coaker: May I begin by joining the hon. Gentleman in his expression of condolence? With respect to cautions, whether they concern sex offenders or anyone else who has offended, that is a matter for the police to determine according to the individual circumstances of the case. The police have available to them a menu or range of options to deal with offenders. They make a professional judgment in liaison and consultation with colleagues about the best way forward, and cautions are part of that. If the hon. Gentleman looked at the individual circumstances of each case in which a caution was used, I bet that he would find that he agreed with a significant number. If he looked at those individual circumstances, rather making a grand political point and adding them all together, he would find that the truth is much more complicated than he has portrayed it.

James Brokenshire: One of the factors affecting arrest rates is the increased pressure on police officers to issue penalty notices to satisfy Government targets. Given that half those notices are paid and do not carry a criminal conviction, what confidence can the public have that issuing what are little more than glorified parking tickets is really bringing crime to justice?

Vernon Coaker: The hon. Gentleman knows that crime has fallen. Before the introduction of fixed penalty notices and penalty notices for disorder, a large number of those offences went unpunished. We need to ensure that the system of fixed penalty notices and penalty notices for disorder works effectively and efficiently. In many respects it does and it has enabled the police to deal with an offence on the street in a community, which they would not have been able to do before.

Bob Blizzard: With reference to burglary, the Crimestoppers page in last week's  Lowestoft Journal showed that there were no burglaries at all in Lowestoft the previous week, in line with the trend. We still have a problem with criminal damage, but recently one of our safer neighbourhood teams, with the local council, blitzed an area of town, clearing away piles of fly-tipped rubbish, returning 16 children to school and seizing or reporting 20 cars. Will my hon. Friend congratulate all the people involved in that and encourage other safer neighbourhood teams throughout the country to get stuck in and deal with criminal damage?

Vernon Coaker: I congratulate my hon. Friend on drawing to the attention of the House the excellent work of the  Lowestoft Journal and its Crimestoppers page, which seems to be having a dramatic impact on Lowestoft, especially the report of no burglaries that he highlighted. The important point made my hon. Friend—we should draw attention to it because of its relevance to the rest of the country—is the fact that successful neighbourhood policing, as he mentioned, involves not only the police but the council, schools and health services. Effective neighbourhood management, alongside effective neighbourhood policing, means that we get not only the sort of results in Lowestoft that my hon. Friend described, but similar results across the country.

Police Patrols

Philip Hollobone: What his most recent estimate is of the average proportion of a police constable's time which is spent on patrol.

Tony McNulty: Fourteen per cent. of officer time was spent on patrol. The figure is not broken down by rank. Some 63.1 per cent. of officer time was spent on broader front-line activities. All the figures are for 2005-06. Other front-line activities not captured by the definition of "patrol" include arrests, dealing with incidents, gathering intelligence, responding to 999 calls, carrying out searches, dealing with informants, and interviewing suspects, victims and witnesses.

Philip Hollobone: Is not the fact that 14 per cent. of police constables' time is spent on patrol a national disgrace? The fact that at any one time only one in 58 police officers is out on patrol is also shameful. Is it not the case that under the present Government pre-emptive patrolling by police constables on foot in most of our towns and cities effectively has come to an end?

Tony McNulty: No, I do not perceive it in those terms, precisely because of what I said. Patrol means visible, yes, and available. To define patrol alongside policing generally is wrong. That is why we prefer the front-line figure, which encompasses all those active elements to which I referred, including arrests, dealing with incidents and gathering intelligence—all elements that go to meeting what our communities would expect from policing. That, together with the figure for officers on patrol or ready for patrol, comes to some 75 per cent. I accept the implied point that of the remaining 25 per cent., some 20 per cent. is incident-related and other paperwork. We need to drive down the amount of police time spent on paperwork, but I do not regard what I have said about front-line policing and patrol as shameful in any way. It is a matter of great celebration for our communities that our police are doing such a good job.

Kelvin Hopkins: Police constables on patrol put themselves at serious risk every day of their lives on behalf of us and every citizen. That was tragically illustrated in Luton town centre this morning. As a Luton Member, may I add my condolences to those of other Members on behalf my constituents, who depend upon people such as Jonathan Henry and others? I pay tribute to him and convey my sympathy to his family. Will my hon. Friend, and indeed my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, look again at how we can deal with knife crime, which is still too prevalent and at how we can protect police officers in the future?

Tony McNulty: First, I join my hon. Friend in passing on condolences to the family of Jonathan Henry and, indeed, to anyone associated with policing in Bedfordshire, not least in my hon. Friend's home town of Luton. As he says, it was an appalling incident and we all pass on our sympathies.
	On my hon. Friend's broader point, we are doing much on knife crime, but it would be wrong, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at the last summit held in Downing street, to assume that it can be dealt with only by legislation by the Government. Yes, it is about legislation, but it is also about culture, awareness and education and some of the responsibility must go to parenting and families. Only by tackling all three of those elements, which we are trying to do, will we get rid of the scourge of knife crime. However, I broadly agree with all the sentiments that my hon. Friend expressed.

David Ruffley: The Minister's figures from 6 March 2007 show that a staggering 16.5 per cent. of patrol officers' time is spent on paperwork. Has he any workable proposals to cut red tape for our police?

Tony McNulty: The issue is not simply red tape. About half the time that the hon. Gentleman refers to is spent on incident-related paperwork. There must be proper due process in relation to audit trails and paperwork, not least in preparation for the matter being dealt with in the criminal justice system. I am with the hon. Gentleman on the other half of the equation: some 7.98 per cent. of the figure relates to non-incident-related paperwork. Through work force modernisation, considering who is doing what job in the police force and greater use of technology such as handheld personal digital assistants, we are working closely with the Association of Chief Police Officers and assorted forces to drive that figure down. I am with the hon. Gentleman on that figure, but the notion that somehow we will get rid of all paperwork is not correct because of, quite rightly, due process in relation to the criminal justice system.

Celia Barlow: In the light of that answer, does my hon. Friend agree that a truer estimate of time spent on the streets would involve the increase in neighbourhood policing? That is the cornerstone of Sussex police's approach; they have introduced 53 new specialist neighbourhood teams, ensuring that every neighbourhood has its own dedicated group. Will my hon. Friend confirm that he will support the extra funding that has gone into those areas and, indeed, increase it, so that such measures can reflect what is necessary for local people and what they feel is important?

Tony McNulty: I broadly agree with my hon. Friend and will certainly agree to support the existing funding levels and the overall policy of neighbourhood policing, which is making a profound difference to communities up and down the country, as I see when I go out and about on my travels. She also can be assured that the sustainability of the neighbourhood policing fund and policy will be an important cornerstone of our bid in the comprehensive spending review, but it is not for me to pre-empt or prejudge the outcome of that review.

Nick Herbert: The definition of front-line policing that the Minister said that he preferred includes time filling in forms. Officers involved in that are not on the front line; they are in a back office. Four years after a previous Home Secretary promised a "bonfire of the paperwork" to free up more police time, the Police Federation says that bureaucracy has got worse, and the Government's own figures show that police officers spend more time on paperwork than on patrol. Instead of waiting 10 years to set up another review, when will the Government act to cut red tape and get police officers back on the beat, where the public want to see them?

Tony McNulty: As I said to the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone), it is fundamentally mendacious to assume that the 14 per cent. figure relates only to the time when the police are available and carrying out policing. That is simply not the case. Yes, of course we need to drive down paperwork, and we will be saying to the Flanagan review that we need to do more on targets and wider bureaucracy, but it is not right for the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) to dismiss as blithely as he does the figure of 63.1 per cent. that I quoted, which I repeat relates to arrests, dealing with incidents, gathering intelligence, responding to 999 calls, carrying out searches, dealing with informants and interviewing suspects, victims and witnesses. I do not doubt that paperwork may be involved, but one does not have to be a genius to work out that any such paperwork probably contributes to affording our citizens due process under the criminal justice system. I would be happy to find out which part of the criminal justice system the hon. Gentleman wants to get rid of.

Police Funding

Ben Chapman: What arrangements are in place for the funding of policing for major events; and if he will make a statement.

Joan Ryan: Policing of major events is the responsibility of the relevant local police forces from their normal budget. In exceptional cases, in which particular strain would be placed on a police authority's budget, additional Government support may be provided.

Ben Chapman: Is not it absurd that Merseyside police should be refused extra resources for policing the many events during the European capital of culture year of 2008, especially given that Liverpool represents the whole United Kingdom that year and in light of precedent for other events elsewhere? Does my hon. Friend agree with the statement in another place that the people of Merseyside should be so pleased that Liverpool has been honoured in such a way that they should be prepared to forgo adequate policing for the duration?

Joan Ryan: May I take the opportunity to congratulate Liverpool on being awarded the status of European capital of culture? It is a fantastic opportunity for Liverpool to show not only Europe but the world what a great city it is.
	I am sure that my hon. Friend knows that all police forces in England and Wales have received sustained increases in finding under the Government. For Merseyside, the increase in total grants is £98 million—a 45.5 per cent. increase—since 1997. Merseyside also has 123 more police officers than in March 1997 and the number of police community support officers has doubled in the past six months to 466. The increases have put Merseyside police in a strong position to cope with the additional demands arising from Liverpool's year as European capital of culture. I hope that local authorities and businesses will consider contributing to policing costs, as they stand to reap significant benefits from such investment.

Lembit �pik: Will the Under-Secretary meet me and bereaved parents to hear the case for funding a major police murder inquiry into the deaths at Deepcut Army barracks, as recommended by Devon and Cornwall police?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question is out of order and the hon. Gentleman is out of order in raising the matter here.

Jane Kennedy: Although I understand the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Ben Chapman) made about his constituents' concerns about suffering a lower level of policing through management of the events in 2008, will my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary bear it in mind that the Liberal Democrat administration of Liverpool has had five years to plan for those events but has signally failed to provide the funding, thus taking Liverpool into 20 million of debt? By notifying the chief constable too late to allow him to plan properly, the administration is left asking taxpayers throughout Britain to fund Liverpool's year of culture. Are not all of us who wish Liverpool well in that year in danger of being let down by its administration?

Joan Ryan: My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The policing costs are not a sudden or unexpected pressure. Liverpool opted to bid to be the European capital of culture; it was a voluntary decision. One would presume that those responsible chose to bid on the basis that the benefits would exceed the costs. They should factor in the cost of security when they decide to bid. As my right hon. Friend said, the administration has known since 2003 that Liverpool would be the European capital of culture. The local police have had plenty of time to prepare and plan, and that is certainly true of the local authority.
	My right hon. Friend knows that the chief constable and the assistant chief constable have already briefed my hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter Terrorism and Police on the policing aspects of the year. He also visited Merseyside

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the Under-Secretary has made the point.

Acceptable Behaviour Orders

Anne McIntosh: What representations he has received on plans to issue acceptable behaviour orders to first time offenders convicted of burglary.

Vernon Coaker: None. There is no such proposal.

Anne McIntosh: Will the Minister therefore account for the fact that there have been very credible newspaper reports that the Government are planning to introduce antisocial behaviour orders or acceptable behaviour contracts for first-time offenders of burglary? Will the Government now take this opportunity to restore the balance in favour of the victims of burglary, such as the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), because the law has moved too far in favour of the offender rather than the victim?

Vernon Coaker: The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point, but it is precisely the Government's position that we expect people caught and charged with burglary to be put before the courts. That is what we expect. We do not expect behavioural interventions to happen for burglary, though it may be that, on conviction, a criminal sentence is given by the court, with an antisocial behaviour order applied as well as the criminal sentence. Intervention before, however, is not appropriate. As far as the Home Office is concerned, we believe that any burglar should be arrested, charged and put before the courts.

Jim Cunningham: In relation to antisocial behaviour, will my hon. Friend consider having discussions with police forces up and down the country with a view to introducing a knives amnesty? Some years ago, the  Coventry Evening Telegraph, together with the police, introduced a voluntary amnesty, which was very successful.

Vernon Coaker: A knives amnesty is obviously a matter for local police forces, but we are prepared to consider any representations that we receive with respect to that or any other matter, including antisocial behaviour orders.

Richard Benyon: Acceptable behaviour orders may or may not be effective against some burglars, but what is beyond doubt is that many burglaries and other crimes are drug related. The Home Office has rightly taken up concerns about rising crime rates in my area, but at the same time has cut funding to the drug intervention programme by 11.5 per cent. in this financial yearwith very little warning to the drug action team or other local drug and alcohol advisory teams. Is that not a bad example of joined-up government?

Vernon Coaker: Before 2003, there was no such thing as a drug intervention programme. Furthermore, the 149 million that I believe we are spending on drug intervention programmes means that, for the first time, people arrested for drug-related offences now have an intervention programme that not only treats their drug-related addiction, but punishes them for the criminal activity that they have undertaken.

East Midlands Special Operations Unit

Bob Laxton: What his plans are for future funding of the east midlands special operations unit.

Tony McNulty: First, I believe that I may have inadvertently accused the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) of being mendacious, which I am sure is unparliamentary. I meant, of course, that he was totally misguided, but I was not referring in any way to his veracity or honesty. I apologise for that.
	As to the east midlands special operations unit, Home Office funding totalling some 6 million for last year and this year has been provided. Continuing funding from 2008-09 will, of course, be a matter for the comprehensive spending review.

Bob Laxton: I am sure that the Minister agrees with me that the east midlands special operations unit is doing some exceptionally valuable work in dealing with high levels of organised crime. May I remind my hon. Friend that he made a statement on the police grant earlier this year, in which he accepted that Derbyshire was, shall I say, not the most generously funded police authority? Clearly, if there is no guarantee of ongoing funding for this special operations unit, there may be some doubt about its futurehence my question.

Tony McNulty: I hear what my hon. Friend says. Not just for the benefit of Derbyshire, but for the other four forces involved in the east midlands, may I explain that since the discussions on merged forces, east midlands as a region above all others has made considerable progress in terms of closing the gap on protective services? I realise that that is, at least in part, because of the work done by the east midlands special operations unit. That will be a factor when we come to consider the east midlands generally under the comprehensive spending review and policing therein.

Peter Bone: rose

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman will know better than I do whether Northamptonshire is in the east midlands. If it is, I can call him to speak.

Peter Bone: It is.

Mr. Speaker: In that case, I call the hon. Gentleman.

Peter Bone: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
	I should like to ask a question on behalf of Northamptonshire police, which is one of the forces in the east midlands. The Minister has just said that everything they were doing was correct and exactly what the Government wanted, including closer co-operation on serious crime such as human trafficking. However, the Government will not give a guarantee of funding for the future. Surely that is a mistake. Should not the Minister give such a guarantee?

Tony McNulty: I simply cannot give that guarantee, because of the due process across Government in relation to the next three years of the comprehensive spending review.

David Taylor: One of the few positive outcomes of the abject and abortive attempt to amalgamate the five forces of the east midlands, including Leicestershire, was a renewed focus on the performance of those forces in the areas in which they have amalgamated and co-operated in an effective way. The east midlands special operations unit is a classic example of this. It is a beacon grouping which could give lessons to those in other parts of the country who wish to avoid having a regional force. I endorse the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Laxton) for an extended funding commitment in the public spending review, and I hope that the Minister will back that call when the matter is under review later this year.

Tony McNulty: As I have said, this is a matter for the comprehensive spending review, but I agree with my hon. Friend and all colleagues from the east midlands, including Northamptonshire, that there has been considerable progress on the protective and level 2 services agenda. That can beand, I hope, will berecognised in the next CSR, but I cannot pre-empt the review.

Counter-terrorism

Stephen Hammond: When he will announce details of the Government's revised counter-terrorism strategy.

John Reid: We are constantly reviewing and updating our counter-terrorism strategy. As part of this, I am pleased to announce that, tomorrow, we are launching the security and counter-terrorism science and innovation strategy. This strategy has been developed across government, led by the new Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office, and is a practical example of how we are developing a more strategic and integrated response to the threat. Science and innovation will be critical in driving forward these changes and delivering new counter-terrorism capabilities.

Stephen Hammond: I thank the Home Secretary for his answer. In July last year, the Government published a document on countering terrorism, which was a review of the 12-point plan set out by the Prime Minister after 7/7. Will the Home Secretary give us an update on which of the points have not yet been fulfilled, and tell us what actions he plans to take to fulfil them?

John Reid: From memory, I think that all but one of them have been either started or completed. On the overall picture, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we have increased the annual spending on counter-terrorism and resilience to 2.25 billion across government over the past 12 months. In the past month, we have announced the refocusing of the Home Office towards counter-terrorism, crime and immigration, to supplement the effort of the increased resources. Most recently, I announced last week my intention to bring forward a new counter-terrorism Bill containing a range of measures, on which we hope to consult and to achieve, at best, solidarity and, at a minimum, consensus across the House. Two weeks later, I shall be leaving and handing over to a new Home Secretary, so the fight for counter-terrorism, my interest, will go on. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all Members of the House for the constructive and emollient approach that they have adopted towards the Home Office in the past 12 months; it would have been very difficult to go on without the laudable appreciation that has so often been exchanged across the Chamber.

David Winnick: We shall certainly miss my right hon. Friend. In dealing with counter-terrorism, is it not also important to remember the victims of terror? Will my right hon. Friend tell me whether anything can be done urgently to look into the approximately 120 outstanding claims of the victims of terror on 7 July? Some have lost limbs or sustained other serious injuries, and they have been waiting a very long time for a final settlement of their claims. Should not this matter receive much greater priority than it has done?

John Reid: I would love to sayindeed, I willthat, in the case of my hon. Friend missing me, the feeling will be mutual. Attention to the victims of the terrorist atrocities in London is given the highest priority. I cannot think of another occasion on which all the victims of a major tragedy have been seen, or at least had an offer to be seen, by at least two Cabinet Ministers. Both I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport have tried to do that. When I last inquired about reports of delays in such payments, I was satisfied that most were either the result of complicated medical evidence being awaited or claims having been submitted in the past few months. People sometimes do not claim during the initial period, as the symptoms only become obvious at a later stage. At my hon. Friend's request, I shall reassure myself that those cases are not being neglected or receiving a lack of priority.

G8 Summit

Tony Blair: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the G8 summit, which took place between 6 and 8 June in Heiligendamm in Germany.
	1 pay tribute to Chancellor Merkel's outstanding chairmanship. The purpose of the summit was to take forward the agenda first established at the Gleneagles G8 summit of 2005, on climate change and Africa.
	On climate change, the scale of the challenge, environmentally and politically, has been becoming clearer month by month. There is now a scientific consensus that the planet is warming dangerously. If we do not halt and then reverse the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, we face a potential catastrophe. Sir Nicholas Stern's report has shown that early action will save money; late action will cost it. Therefore, for the environment, this is urgent.
	Politically, the problem has been clear but daunting. The United States was not part of the Kyoto treaty. The major emitters in the years to come will include China and India and developing nations. They want to grow their economies. They fear that action on climate change will limit their growth and hence keep their peoplehundreds of millions of thempoor. Added to all that, Kyoto barely stabilises emissionsit is now obvious that we need substantially to cut themand it expires in 2012.
	At Gleneagles, we set up the G8 plus 5 dialoguethe first time that the US and China have sat round the same table debating how to put a new deal together. There is still a long way to go, but for the first time an outline agreement can now be seen that meets the environmental test of cutting substantially the harmful emissions and the political test of bringing developed and developing nations, notably America and China, together.
	We agreed at the G8, for the first time, that a new global climate change agreement should succeed the current Kyoto treaty. We agreed, for the first time, that at the heart of that agreement should be a substantial cut in global emissions. The summit sent an important signal that the global target should be of the order of a cut of at least 50 per cent. in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050the target set by the European Union, Japan and Canada.
	We agreed at the G8, for the first time, that the process for such a new agreement should be set out. We agreed that the UN is the only body able to finalise a global deal on climate change and that a comprehensive agreement should be reached in 2009. We called on all countries to see the UN climate change meeting in December as the first step towards achieving a comprehensive climate change agreement.
	The most important change was in relation to the position of the United States of America. Again, for the first time, President Bush signalled that he wanted the US to be part of the new global agreement, and would lead the attempt to get consensus among all the main countries, including China and India, so that that consensus could shape the final global deal. That is crucial. There will be no effective climate change accord without the US, and the US will not agree without China being part of it. Now we have an agreement in principle, a goal and a process to achieve it. Much remains to be done, but on any basis that is a substantial step forward.
	We agreed that tackling climate change and addressing energy security were complementary goals. We highlighted the importance of tackling energy efficiency, dealing with emissions caused by deforestation and helping developing countries, which are likely to be worst hit by climate change, to adapt to its impacts. We agreed on a renewed effort to develop and deploy new low-carbon technologies, and we have sent a strong message that emissions trading schemes, both within and between countries, will play a key role in giving incentives to business to invest in those technologies.
	Heiligendamm was never going to be about finalising a deal. It was about sending a clear signal on the shape of the post-2012 climate change framework, and that is exactly what it did. The United Kingdom, for its part, will work hard in the G8, in the United Nations and elsewhere to deliver the objective that is of such fundamental importance to the future of the world.
	Two years ago the Gleneagles G8 agreed to a global increase in aid and debt relief of $50 billion by 2010, with $25 billion of that extra for Africa. It also agreed to universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010, the tackling of other killer diseases, a commitment to funding primary education, support for an African peacekeeping force, and a big debt write-off. Britain is already meeting its commitment to increase aid for Africa: I am proud to say that we have trebled it. Before the summit Germany announced an extra 3 billion over four years, and America announced an extra $15 billion for treating HIV/AIDS over five years. Overall aid has risen. We should not ignore what has already been done, or the almost $40 billion of additional debt relief for Africa since 2005, but we will need to do substantially more to ensure that the Gleneagles provisions are observed.
	The G8 did, however, reiterate its commitment to delivering universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010. Since Gleneagles, around 1 million people in Africa have been receiving the antiretroviral drugs that they need. Now the G8 has agreed to fund a total of 5 million. That is more than the G8 share of the commitment as predictions stand, but we can do more in years to come to meet the 2010 goal if the need arises, and we are committed to providing $60 billion over the next few years in Africa to help to achieve that. We are also committed to meeting the estimated $6 billion to $8 billion shortfall in funding for the global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, andreflecting United Kingdom policyto providing the long-term predictable funding that is necessary to achieve the fund's overall goals.
	The G8 committed itself to taking specific steps to tackle the alarming feminisation of the AIDS epidemic. In sub-Sarahan Africa some 60 per cent. of adults living with HIV/AIDS are women, and three out of four young people living with HIV are women and girls. The G8 committed itself to scaling up its efforts to deliver universal access of services to prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to their children, to paediatric services and to maternal and child health services, at a total cost of nearly $5 billion.
	The G8 also committed itself to working to fill the immediate $500 million financing gap for the education fast-track initiative. Again in line with broader United Kingdom policy, the G8 committed itself to helping to provide long-term predictable funding to ensure that every child gets to school, and reiterated its commitment to ensuring that no country that was seriously committed to education for all would be thwarted in the achievement of its goal by a lack of resources. That will help the meeting of the millennium development goal of universal primary education by 2015.
	In addition, the G8 committed itself to identifying, agreeing and supporting lasting solutions to the financing of peacekeeping missions in Africa. That is essential if key missions such as the African Union mission in Darfur are not to limp on hand to mouth for month after month. We agreed a strong statement on the crisis in Darfur. The truth is that President Bashir of Sudan has consistently refused to admit a hybrid United Nations-African Union force, and has consistently moved only under the threat of pressure from outside. Unless he now agrees to the G8 and UN demands, we are committed to a new and tougher package of sanctions, through the Security Council, to force him to do so.
	Our last session was dominated by discussion of the world trade talks. The gap has now narrowed. There is the real possibility of agreeing an outline deal by the end of June. The outstanding elements amount to only a few percentage points either way. We are therefore closer to the headline numbers than ever before, but we have to move from wanting to do the deal to doing it. The meeting that will take place at G4 between 19 and 23 June will be absolutely crucial. Britain will continue to do all we canand we have done much over the past monthsto bridge the remaining gap.
	The benefits of a world trade agreement for the wealthy nations as well as the developing nations are enormous. It would be good for business and jobs, good for the multilateral system, and good for the world's poorest. I urge the United States, the European Union and the G20 developing countries to get that deal done. It will be great to succeed. It will be a profound shame to fail.
	As usual at G8 summits, I also had bilateral meetings with a number of leaders, in particular a long and frank meeting with President Putin, covering the range of issues currently under discussionthe Litvinenko case, Kosovo, ballistic missile defence and energy policy. I set out our view that people were becoming worried and fearful about the implications of present Russian policy. The President set out with equal frankness his views. It was right to have such an exchange. The issues were aired with complete openness on both sides. I said to him that we wanted a good relationship with Russia. He affirmed his desire to see Russia-UK relations strong, but the truth is that the issues between our two countries remain unresolved.
	Therefore, this summit made a real breakthrough on climate change, more progress on Africa and showed again the value to Britain of its transatlantic and European alliances. I commend the outcome to the House.

David Cameron: I would like to start by thanking the Prime Minister for his statement. I wish to raise four main areas. The first is climate change. The agreement reached at the G8 is welcome and we should congratulate the Prime Minister on his part in achieving it. Clearly, the US Administration are now taking a different approach to climate change, but can he tell us the extent to which he believes that the change in language will be backed by changes in action? After the Prime Minister's first summit in 1997, he told the House that the United States could be on the verge of agreeing to legally binding targets. We still need that to happen.
	Will the Prime Minister clear up the potential confusion about baselines for the targets? Does he agree that the cuts must be measured from a 1990 baseline? As he said, the involvement of India and China is vital. He said that the goal must now be a full successor to the Kyoto treaty, with binding targets, involving the US, India and China. What prospect does he see for real progress to be made at December's UN climate change conference in Indonesia?
	The destruction of the world's forests is responsible for one fifth of carbon emissions, which is even more than those generated by transport. Does the Prime Minister agree that the language in the communiqu about deforestation is very disappointing? When it comes to climate change, clearly, international action is essential, but domestic leadership remains vital. Does he share my concern that carbon emissions in the United Kingdom have risen in the past decade?
	The second major issue is tackling poverty in Africa. On debt relief, progress has been made since Gleneagles and we welcome that, but on aid there is some confusion and I would be grateful if the Prime Minister could try to clear up some of the figures. There is concern that the announced additional aid is not all new money. Will he confirm that the $60 billion headline figure amounts to $12 billion to be spent annually on AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and reinforcing health systems, and that up to $9 billion of that has been pledged annually already, or is part of existing packages? Therefore, according to those Oxfam estimates, the total annual increase in spending amounts to just $3 billion a year. What can he say to those who, after the enthusiasm of Live Aid, now feel quite disappointed?
	A further concern is that countries do not stick to their promises. On HIV/AIDS in particular, at Gleneagles, the G8 pledged to make access to prevention and antiretroviral treatment available to all by 2010. We argued here for interim targets to make that possible. I listened carefully to what the Prime Minister said, but is it not the case that the G8 has effectively watered down its own commitment, that it is now promising to provide treatment for 5 million people, but that that falls well short of what is required?
	A key part of ensuring that countries keep their promises is to examine the quality of aid, as well as the quantity. Is it not now time for an independent international body to measure and compare the impact and effectiveness of aid, and to drive up standards so that G8 member states achieve value for money in the aid they spend?
	The Prime Minister and I agree that the best way to encourage development in the longer term is to promote free and fair trade. That is what the Doha round was meant to be about. President Bush's special authority to agree a deal on trade ends on 30 June, so we are close to the 59th minute of the eleventh hour. What steps will the Prime Minister take in the coming three critical weeks, and especially in the run-up to the Potsdam trade meeting in a week's time, to help get Doha back on track?
	The third issue is Darfur, the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis. As the Prime Minister said, the G8 statement on Darfur covers important issues, such as an international force and the need for aid to get through to the refugee camps. The words are good, but will things actually change on the ground? Is it not abundantly clear to anyone who has visited that region that the real problem is the Khartoum Government, and their utter unwillingness to co-operate with the international community in putting an end to the killing? Does the Prime Minister agree that only strong and united action will overcome that resistance by the Sudanese Government?
	The fourth issue is security. We welcome the measures on nuclear security and counter-terrorism, and the strong language about Iran. On Russia, when someone is murdered on British soil, the police and other relevant authorities should be able to pursue the perpetrators without fear or favour wherever their investigations lead. Will the Prime Minister tell us a little more about the progress that he made in his talks on that issue with President Putin?
	The Prime Minister has indicated that after he leaves office he plans to remain engaged in the issues discussed at the G8, and especially climate change and development. We wait to see in what capacity; I even read in the papers that he might swap the Dispatch Box for a pulpit and the House of Commons for a church. Whatever he does, the Prime Minister can take credit for pushing the issues of climate change and poverty up the agenda of the group of most powerful nations in the world. The Opposition will always ask the appropriate questions about the delivery of the promises that have been made, but raising the profile of those issues is a genuine achievement for which many have cause to be grateful.

Tony Blair: First of all, let me [Interruption.] First of all, let me

David Davis: He is embarrassed.

Tony Blair: No, you lose any sense of embarrassment after a time in this job. First, let me thank the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) for his generous words at the end of his speechif not for his career suggestions.
	There are important issues in relation to climate change. In 1997, the United States appeared to be ready to sign up to the Kyoto treaty, but before we put all the blame for that not happening on the change of Administration, it is worth pointing out that the US Senate voted byI think98 votes to none against the treaty, so there has long been an issue to do with how far the US is prepared to go in signing up to a global deal. It is particularly important to remember that there is no point in having a new agreement on climate change unless the US is involved, and unless China and India share the common goalalbeit perhaps with differentiated obligations.
	That is why I do not consider the fact that the US will lead some of the meetings at G8 plus 5 or G8 plus 7 to be adverse. On the contrary, that is a good thing because the more the Americans are prepared to take a clear lead on this issue, the better. They will, of course, be anxious to ensure that China and India are part of the deal and that everyone has obligations, and the reality is that the Europeans would also arrive at that position.
	The fact that we have the prospect of a new deal with a substantial cut in emissions at its heart is a huge step forward. Of course, the December meeting will be vital but, as I have said time and again, there is no point in getting a hundred countries around the table making an agreement if their emissions amount to only 20 per cent. of the total. The G8 plus 5 represents more than 70 per cent. of the emissions. China will overtake the US as the major emitter within the next few years, and India's emissions are already rising substantially. Those countries will be worried and concerned to make sure that we do not impose on them obligations that limit their growth, but that is why the other part of thisI did not deal with this in detail in my statementis technology transfer. As we develop the new technologies, we will have to share them with the developing world.
	What the right hon. Gentleman says on deforestation is right, but there will be the possibility of making more concrete the actions proposed at the December meeting in Indonesia. On CO2 emissions, yes, it is true that we, like other countries, have got to do far more, but that is the purpose of the Climate Change Bill and other matters.
	On Africa, there is a confusion here that it is important to pin down. At Gleneagles, there was a commitment to an extra $50 billion a year, $25 billion of which should go to Africa, and that was for aid and debt relief. What is then important is not that there is new money on top of the $25 billion, but that we say how the $25 billion is going to be met. Therefore, although it is true when people say, Well, only several billion dollars of the HIV/AIDS money is new, the important thing is that it is a major fulfilment of what was set out in general at the Gleneagles summit. So on HIV/AIDS, the more specific that we are on education and on treating other killer diseases, the more that this $25 billion stops being a general figure and becomes one that people can add up and thereby see what has happened.
	The situation becomes very complicated for another two reasons. First, it is unclear the degree to which debt relief counts as aid; that is a separate argument in itself. Secondly, on HIV/AIDS treatment, World Health Organisation predictions are in the course of being revised. The G8 summit at Heiligendamm committed to providing help for 5 million people, which is a very substantial uplift on anywhere that we have been before. It is true that we may have to go further between now and 2010, when the commitment is set, but I think it somewhat unreasonable to say that there has not been substantial progress. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is not saying that, but it is important for those campaigning outside to realise that for the first time, we are putting real numbers on HIV/AIDS treatment. Five million people getting antiretroviral drugs is a massive change from where we are at the moment. If we need to do more, we should be prepared to do more, and that is why this is described as an important step and not the total fulfilment of our commitments.
	On the international body, this is a debate that will go on. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has outlined his approach to this issue, which is through a committee, but I agree that one way or another, it is important that we hold to account the international community for the commitments that it has given. But one important thing was agreed right at the end of summit. The Japanese, who will hold the summit next year, agreed that Africa should again be a central part of the agenda. That is an important thing, and I believe that the world will meet the commitments that it set out, but along the way there will be much debate.
	It has to be said that, over the next few years, America will effectively have multiplied by a factor of five the amount of aid that it has given to Africa since President Bush came to powersomething that is not always pointed out. But we still need some of the other European countries to do more, and part of our discussion inside the European Union and elsewhere will be to make sure that countries that have been falling back on their aid commitments in recent years step up to them.
	On the world trade talks, the right hon. Gentleman is absolute rightthe meeting next week will be crucial, but the gap has narrowed. The assessment given by Pascal Lamy, the head of the World Trade Organisation, was noticeably more upbeat, but there is still very hard negotiating to do before we are there. I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman says on Darfur and the necessity for action there. On the talks with Russia, no, I cannot say that we have made great progress on the Litvinenko case. We shall continue, obviously, to do all that we can to press the Russians on this issue.

Andrew MacKinlay: In his bilateral discussions with President Putin, was the Prime Minister not impressed by the case advanced regarding the Russians' objections to the Ahtisaari planthat they have adhered diligently to the Helsinki Final Act of 30 years ago, which said that the boundaries of European states would not be varied, and that they see a concession on Kosovo's independence as being a green light to Transnistria and to other frozen conflicts in Georgia and Armenia being dealt with similarly? Have they not got a case that should not be scornfully set aside, and should we not listen to them, because there is prudent counsel even in the Kremlin?

Tony Blair: What my hon. Friend says is the Russian case, but we have said throughout, and I believe this to be true, that Kosovo is sui generis for the reasons that have been given many times over the past few years. The difficulty comes if we do not take this issue to its conclusion, which is why we asked Mr. Ahtisaari to look at it, and if we do not then act on his conclusions, we will be in stalemate. I do not think that that would be good either for the people in Kosovo or for the region. I certainly do not dismiss and never have dismissed the Russian case scornfully, but none the less, we have moved on from where we were a few years ago. For most of us, it is difficult to see the way in which we achieve a solution, other than on the terms set out by Mr. Ahtisaari.

Menzies Campbell: I, too, welcome the Prime Minister's statement, and I am sure that he speaks for the whole House in what he says about Darfur and the world trade talks.
	In spite of the Prime Minister's optimism, though, is not he disappointed as he leaves office that, although there is a commitment to talks, there is as yet no binding commitment to action on carbon emissions? Is not what is urgently needed an agreed framework for reduction, based on the principle of contraction and convergence? What is the Prime Minister's honest assessment of the chances of achieving that? In view of Oxfam's statement that Africa will feel the effects of global warming first and worst, does not it underline the need for agreed targets for reduction if the G8's agenda for Africa is to have any chance of being fully implemented? The truth is that the G8 statement on aid is in effect a promise to keep the promises that were made at Gleneagles. How can we be satisfied that that promise will be kept rather than the others?
	Finally, although there is no mention of this in the Prime Minister's statement, the G8 statement says that all participants reaffirm their commitment to combat corruption by implementing their obligations to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Is the Prime Minister satisfied that Her Majesty's Government are fulfilling those obligations?

Tony Blair: Yes, I am.
	One always has to be careful about taking the attitude that everything has not been achieved, therefore nothing has been achieved. In relation to the first two points, the fact is that we have come a long way on a climate change deal. There never was a prospect of concluding a treaty or an agreement at this G8, but for the first time we have the agreement from the United States that it wants to be part of a deal; an agreement to a substantial cut in emissions; an agreement for China and India to participate in the talks leading to that; an agreement that it should be through the UN; and an agreement that it should happen in 2009. It is some progress, I think.
	In respect of Africa, what is important is that our promises at Gleneagles were for fulfilment in 2010. I agree that unless we ramp up the pressure, there is a danger that we will not meet all those commitments. On the other hand, and again for the first time, there have been substantial increases in the promises made. One of the things that has happened with the summit, which is one of the values of having such issues decided at the G8 and very different from the G8s of years gone by, is that the occasion of the summit is the occasion for countries to come forward and start to make commitments. In other words, I think that but for the G8, we would have been very unlikely to get major and substantial increases in commitments on HIV/AIDS, or the German aid package and so on. Although it is right to say that there is a long way still to go on climate change and Africa, we have made considerable progress.

Jeremy Corbyn: In the meetings that the Prime Minister had with President Putin, was the issue of national missile defence tracking stations being built in eastern Europe and in this country raised? Does he not think that there is a danger that the signal we are sending to Russia on that issue is one of encouragement of a new arms race? Would it not be better to have a moratorium on such constructions in order to encourage mutual disarmament?

Tony Blair: Well, I did obviously have a discussion with President Putin about that. His view is that it is a provocation while ours is that it is something in which we have been engaged for a number of years and that it is not aimed at Russiaindeed, the very siting, in Poland and the Czech Republic, is an indication of that. As I understand it, the talks between President Putin and President Bush were reasonably constructive and it will be important that we continue to work with Russia on the issue. It is not a new issue that has suddenly arisen; we have been debating it for several years, which is why I do not really think that it came as a surprise to Russia, so it is important that we see it in the context of other issues.

Peter Tapsell: Did the Prime Minister explain to the leaders at the G8 summit why the policies he has supported in the middle east have plunged Iraq into chaos, established Iran as the dominant influence in the region, engaged British troops in an unachievable mission in southern Afghanistan and are now destabilising both Turkey and Pakistan?

Tony Blair: No, I did not. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that I am afraid I do not recognise that either as a description of our foreign policy or, more important, of the challenge we face. As I have said many times, we shall not beat the terrorist threat by conceding to it.

Ann McKechin: I welcome the emphasis on the world trade talks at last week's meeting, but does my right hon. Friend understand concerns that the meeting at Potsdam this month with the G4, which does not specifically include members from the least developed countries, may lead people to feel that the interests of the poorest in the world will not be adequately addressed? Can he advise me how the United Kingdom Government will ensure that their voices are properly heard and that the development package agreed at Hong Kong will be secured?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend makes a good point. Part of what we did at the G8 was to recommit to the aid for trade package, which is a very important part of helping the developing world. However, within the context of the G4 and representation there from Brazil and India, we shall have the opportunity to debate the case on behalf of the developing world as well. Without going into details about the headline numbers, we are actually quite closea lot closer than we have beenand the important thing to understand is that even if we were to agree what is on the table at the moment the benefits for the poorest countries in the world will be considerable; but I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that we have to remember that this is a development round and what was agreed at Hong Kong should be implemented.

Quentin Davies: May I add my congratulations to the Prime Minister on his achievement on the environmental front, particularly, and on taking such a strong line with President Putin? Does he agree that it may be desirable, and even necessary in the future, to link the world trade talks and the climate change agenda if we are to exert leverage on such countries as Brazil over deforestation, for example? Brazil is the major potential beneficiary of a new world trade agreement and if we lose the possibility of that linkage we may reduce chances of reaching the agreement that we so much want on both fronts.

Tony Blair: I understand entirely the point the hon. Gentleman is making. I was quite heartened by the contribution of the President of Brazil at the G8, which made it clear not merely, obviously, that he wanted a good outcome to the world trade round, but that he took seriously Brazil's responsibilities in relation to deforestation. Through the December meeting, there is a chance of agreeing something far-reaching on thatthe atmospherics on that at least, I thought, were good.

David Borrow: I welcome my right hon. Friend's remarks about increased expenditure on HIV treatment programmes, but may I raise with him the problems in improving programmes to reduce HIV transmission rates in a number of African countries? In some countries, such programmes have not been as successful as they could be because some donors insist that they are focused on the abstinence and being faithful parts of the ABC approachabstain, be faithful, use a condomand do not ensure that funds are made available for condoms? Did my right hon. Friend raise those issues at the conference, in particular with President Bush, as the United States is one of the donors that are the biggest culprits in the matter?

Tony Blair: It was not a specific part of the discussion, but the effectiveness of transmission programmes was. My hon. Friend is right: the difficulty is that maternal transmission, as I saw for myself in Africa a short time ago, is a huge problem. More and more young people are growing up with HIV/AIDS through absolutely no action of their own.
	I think we still have quite a long way to go. We agreed to earmark money up to $5 billion, but I agree that we still have to reach into the basic reasons why programmes are successful. Without question, those reasons involve absolute honesty about how we can best change behaviour and being realistic and reasonable about what we require of people. On the other hand, as a result of what we have agreed on the transmission programmes there will be a greater focus on the matter, and there will therefore be a greater opportunity to get those arguments across.

Angus Robertson: There is a lot to do on debt relief, HIV/AIDS and the environment, and on behalf of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru I welcome the progress made at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. Does the Prime Minister accept that it is standard practice in the G8 that necessary prior consultation on agreements should take place before they are signed with Libya or anybody else?

Tony Blair: Of course it is. That is precisely why on the face of the agreement there is a requirement for consultation with the devolved Assemblies. Before any agreement can be concluded, there has to be consultation with devolved Government, including in respect of Libya and Scotland. All that would have been required was an inquiry from the First Minister's office and the matter would have been cleared up immediately. Instead, we were subjected to a claim that we were trying to drive this through without consultation with the devolved Government in Scotland, which is simply not correct.

Elliot Morley: I thank the Prime Minister for taking the trouble, with all the pressures in his diary, personally to address the global G8 plus 5 legislators' dialogue in the German Bundestag just before the summit. The fact that his leadership is so recognised explains why he was presented with an award for global leadership and environment by a senior member of the Japanese Government, Mrs. Koike, and Senator McCain from the US. There has been a shift on the part of the Americans, and my right hon. Friend is to be congratulated on the role that he has played.
	The US proposes a meeting in the autumn of the G8 plus 5. Does the Prime Minister think that that will add value to the process, or does it merely duplicate the process that he started at Gleneagles?

Tony Blair: I think that it does assist the process. If the United States holds such a meetingof the G8 plus 5 or perhaps with two other countriesmost of the countries sitting round the table will have agreed binding targets or will be in the process of agreeing them. Most will agree with the 50 per cent. cut in emissions, so it is somewhat unlikely that the US will hold such a meeting without some definitive progress arising out of it. For years, the world has said to America, Get on board with this issue and start to lead on it, and when it does the world says, Are you trying to take it over? President Bush made it clear at the summit that America saw the meeting as contributing to and not conflicting with the UN process. That is important. Unless we have agreement between the major emitters, the rest will never happen. I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind words, and for his considerable work on the issue.

Malcolm Rifkind: Does the Prime Minister agree that the recent spat between Russia and the west has little to do with the merits of missile defence and everything to do with the sensitivity that the Russians feel about how they believe they have been treated by the west over the past 15 years? Will the Prime Minister use such influence as remains to him so that on those matters, and only those matters, on which there is a legitimate joint interestmissile defence is onethe United States does not merely inform Russia of its intentions but tries to treat it as a partner in future policy?

Tony Blair: Yes, I think it is important that America does that. After all, America and Russia share some clear strategic goals, not least in ensuring a unified UN position vis--vis Iran. America and Russia want to co-operate in plenty of areas, and the recent statements by President Bush and the offer made at the bilateral meeting by President Putin show that they both understand that they have to find a modus vivendi in which each country pursues its interests, but in a co-operative way. However, it is important that Russia understands that when we support democracy in certain countries, for example, we are doing so not because we are pursuing a strategic interest that is aimed at Russia, but because we genuinely believe that that is the right principle. We need to be able to have a dialogue with Russia in which we take account of its genuine concerns and fears, yet do not allow them to obscure things that it is important we stand for in the long term.

Colin Challen: I, too, welcome the Prime Minister's statement and congratulate him on the progress that he has made towards civilising George Bush. However, given George Bush's record on climate change, what confidence can we really have that he will deal proactively with the problem in the remaining 18 months of his term of office? What assessments has my right hon. Friend made of the Chinese response to George Bush's new-found commitments? Is China happy that he has done the right thing?

Tony Blair: As I said earlier, if people want America to move, and it moves, let us at least say that it has moved and try to make the best of that. This is important, and things are lot a more credible because America is saying that it will hold its own meeting with very much the people around the table at the G8. Something else needs to be said because in this debate, to be frank, countries sometimes hide behind America's position. The truth is that no one will agree a substantial cut in emissions as part of a global deal unless China is also part of that. The Chinese have adopted a constructive attitude. They have a principlea common, differentiated set of obligationsthat we need to flesh out. However, we will need to do that while recognising the two absolute realities of the question of climate change: America will not agree unless China is part of the deal, and China will not agree unless it is able to develop its economy. We have to find a solution somewhere in that.
	I think that the solution is a set of interlinking systems that, around a carbon price, incentivises business and industry to develop the technologies of the future. That is why the European emissions trading system, as it develops, has the possibility of considerably incentivising business to make changes to the way in which it works. However, let us be clear: the European trading system would be more radical if there were also a system in America and an obligation on the developing world. There is every possibility of achieving that, but it is in the negotiation, which will involve America and China, that the solution will be found.

Evan Harris: I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister agree that the use of condoms is critical in fighting AIDS. When he meets the Pope, either as Prime Minister or perhaps afterwards, I hope that he will take the opportunity to make that point.
	Will the Prime Minister reflect on his policy with respect to meeting the target of global universal treatment for HIV? His Government have a policy of trying to remove women and children who are being treated in this country for HIV and AIDS to countries where there is not such treatment because they do not have the required immigration status. Especially at a time when we are using those countries' doctors, is that humane and logical?

Tony Blair: It is important that we ensure that we treat people who are here fairly. We will put 1.5 billion into HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa over the next few years. However, the trouble is that if we say that everyone who is HIV-positive and comes to this country can get treatment here, we will create a real pull factor for people to come here. We must be careful about how we do this.

Tom Levitt: I welcome the G8's acknowledgement that the world's poorest countries are also the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, whether that is desertification, drought or rising sea levels in places such as Bangladesh. I also welcome the commitment to working through the United Nations to ensure that climate change policy is implemented. Is my right hon. Friend confident that the United Nations has the clout to enforce such international agreements? Is this perhaps an opportunity to give a new urgency to questions of UN reform so that we can ensure that it will have the oomph to deliver in the future?

Tony Blair: The point that my hon. Friend makes is important, and I think that he is right: once an agreement is made, it is important that it is properly enforced. Personally, I think that reform of the UN Security Council is now long overdue. However, he is also right in saying that for poorer countries adaptation will be very difficult indeed, and that is why a specific part of the communiqu is geared precisely to making sure that as part of a global deal we help the poorest to adapt to the change in climate.

Edward Leigh: Some unkind souls have suggested that in bilaterals with Sarkozy and Merkel, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to cobble together a deal on the European constitution, which would give us the constitution, but by another name. Perhaps the Prime Minister can assure us that that did not happen. If such negotiations or conversations did take place, would he like to share them with the House of Commons? We do have some right to be consulted, do we not? At the moment, the matter is not so much an enigma wrapped in a riddle as a secret locked away in a spin doctor's briefcase. We would like to know.

Tony Blair: I am used to unkind souls occasionally casting aspersions on what we are trying to do, but on that point I can assure the hon. Gentleman that although it is, of course, important to discuss the issue with our European colleagues, before we get to the summit which is coming up in the next couple of weeks, there will be ample opportunity to discuss those issues.

Jane Kennedy: May I invite my right hon. Friend to say a little more about what he anticipates the benefits will be of expanding education in Africa in the way that he announced today? In my constituency, refugees who have rightly been granted asylum from such countries as the Congo, Cameroon and increasingly, sadly, Somalia, tell me when I meet them how grateful they are to Britain and to my right hon. Friend's leadership for changing attitudes to Africa within the G8. He can rightly be proud of that change.

Tony Blair: I thank my right hon. Friend for that. In relation to education, it is important that we ensure that we meet the millennium development goal. The interesting thing is that as a result of the debt relief that has been given in the past few years, there are millions more children at school in Africa. If anyone ever asks, Where does the money go to when we give debt relief and so on?, I would say that countries such as Tanzania have seen massive increases in the number of children in primary education as a result. The other point that she makes relates, of course, to the self-interested reason for action on Africa. If we allow those countries to descend into conflict or even deeper poverty, they become prey for various extremist forces, and of course they also create large numbers of refugees who then seek to come to our country, so there is a good reason of self-interest to act on Africa.

John Maples: It seems to me that President Bush injected a welcome note of realism and was very constructive in pointing out to the G8 that there was no point in their talking to each other about climate change if the United States and the fast-developing economies of China and India were not involved in the process. The Prime Minister seems to recognise that, and he seems to see that it is in our interests to help those countries to reduce emissions. Has he seen the analysis that I have seen, which suggests that the marginal cost of helping China and India to reduce their carbon emissions is actually less than the cost of doing it for ourselves? In other words, it is in our interests, both economically and in terms of carbon emissions, to help them financially on that issue.

Tony Blair: Yes, that is right, and of course the whole purpose of building up something such as the clean development mechanismfor all the problems associated with it, it none the less does generate real incomeis to be able to create a resource through which we can help those countries to use technology. For example, as we develop carbon sequestration or hydrogen fuel cell technology, we can share that technology with them. That is a crucial part of the issue. The problem with the whole debate, as I reflected when I heard what the leaders were saying, is that it is a matter of fairness what obligations each country has. It is a matter of fairness that the developed world, having developed, should not penalise the developing world, which wants the benefits of development. Unfortunately, the climate does not change according to where the emissions come from; that is simply a matter of science and fact. Therefore it is important that we make sure that the technology transfer and the sharing of the science is an integral part of any deal. Otherwise we will find it very hard, for understandable reasons, to persuade China and India to be part of it.

Keith Vaz: May I join the Leader of the Opposition and others in congratulating the Prime Minister on his great success at the summit, which is a tribute not just to his personal skills but to the role that he has carved out for Britain, our special relationship with the United States and our pivotal role in Europe? Although the Outreach Five will be consulted throughout the process, does he not think that it is time that we should expand the G8 to include those five nations which, after all, represent 2.7 billion people, compared with the 800 million people in the G8? As a master of summitry, does he not think that it is time to expand the G8?

Tony Blair: It is going to be an increasing featurelet me put it diplomaticallyof those summits that they involve, as a matter of course, the other five countries. It becomes very difficulta bit like reforming the UN Security Councilto see where we draw the line, but as the Chinese economy, for example, grows over the next few years, it will become increasingly bizarre to discuss the leading world economies without China being present. However, that is for another time.

Alistair Burt: On Kosovo, the Prime Minister and the House will recall the contribution made to the first Balkan crisis by the premature recognition of independence for Slovenia and Croatia by Germany. Can he give us an assurance that the UK Government are firmly against any premature recognition of Kosovan independence, particularly until the practical consequences have been worked out, not least the protection of minority communities in Kosovo?

Tony Blair: The protection of minority communities is an important issue. That is where Russia, for example [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I expect hon. Members to stand at the beginning, so that I can make a calculation as to who I am going to call. The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) should not come in at the last moment.

Gordon Prentice: I have been here throughout.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman therefore had an opportunity to stand at the beginning.

Tony Blair: Russia has a point in that it is important that we give proper protection to minorities. We are not going to move out of step with the international communitywe will move in step with itbut the difficulty, as became apparent when we discussed Kosovo in detail, is that if we do not go down the path laid out by Mr. Ahtisaari, what happens? It is important that we do not do anything premature, but it is important that we reach a conclusion.

Chris Bryant: Unlike the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and the implications of his question, I wholly congratulate the Prime Minister on adopting a robust attitude with the Russian President. Does the President understand that it is not just the UK but the whole European Union that wants to do business with Russia, but finds it increasingly difficult to do so as there is systematic use of torture by the police in Russia, the right to peaceful assembly is ignored, the murder of journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya remain unresolved, and companies such as BP and Shell are concerned that if they make significant investments in Russia in future they may be expropriated by the Russian Government?

Dennis Skinner: That is not a bad policy.

Tony Blair: But not one that we shall pursue.
	The truth about the relationship with Russia is that we need good relations with it. My meeting with President Putin at a personal level was friendly and cordial, but it will become harder to have the type of relationship that we want unless it is on the basis of certain agreed values. That is how the international community works today and, as I said, there are a lot of issues to resolve.

William Cash: As the Prime Minister knows, a child dies every 15 seconds from foul water and lack of sanitation in Africa. He will know, too, that 220 MPs signed my all-party motion the subject; we went to Downing street and delivered a petition. The G8 water plan at Gleneagles promised to ensure access to safe water for 75 per cent. of people at risk in developing countries. There is nothing in the communiqu, and nothing in the Prime Minister's statement, that deals with water, sanitation and the problems that I have described even though, by any standards, they are a top priority. What practical steps did the Prime Minister take to deliver the promises made at Gleneagles at the G8 summit?

Tony Blair: We are committed, as we were at Gleneagles, to deliver the water and sanitation pledges that we made. I think I am right in saying that that is in the G8 communiqu. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we will have to put specifics on that for the time to come, with respect to water and sanitation and also infrastructure, because part of the problem that many African countries have is the amount of time it takes for them to get any goods to any port that is able to ship them for export. It is not just a question of trade barriers; it is a question of basic problems in relation to infrastructure. Water and sanitation is another issue. This year we decided to focus particularly on HIV/AIDS and education, but the point that the hon. Gentleman raises about water and sanitation would make a very sensible focus for next year's G8.

Vincent Cable: Following the Prime Minister's cryptic response to the question from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) about the G8's commitment to fighting corruption, why should any major British company not assume that if it secures substantial business and employment by offering bribes to an overseas official in an allied country, the British Government will turn a blind eye to any breaches of the law and of our international obligations?

Tony Blair: Because that is neither what we are saying nor what we are doing. Allegations have been made that are fiercely denied. That is not the issue. The issue is whether it is sensible for us to pursue an investigation that may go on for two or three years, which in my judgment would do enormous damage to a relationship that is of vital importance to this country. The hon. Gentleman should be wary of making allegations that are not undisputedin fact, they are hotly disputedand of saying that because the investigation is not going forward, the allegations are somehow accepted. They are not. The question is whether it is sensible and in this country's interest to hold such an investigation, with all the damage that it would do. In the end, as I have said to the media, they have their job to do, but I have my job to do, and if I think something is contrary to the interests of this country, it is my duty to say to.

David Curry: The Prime Minister will acknowledge that there have been reassurances after every summit meeting about new impetus behind the world trade talks, ever since the failure at Cancun. With more protectionist sentiment in the US Congress, and with a French President with an overwhelming majority but a constituency to defend, what confidence can we have that these assurances will be more concrete than previous ones, and what is the pathway after Potsdam to a final agreement?

Tony Blair: Part of the trouble is that underneath the surface, an immense amount has been going on. The matter has formed part of every conversation that I have had over the past few months with President Bush, Chancellor Merkel, the presidency of the European Union and so on. I have spoken regularly to the Prime Minister of India and to the President of Brazil about it. There are three elements: Europe must cut its tariffs, America must cut its farm subsidies, and on non-agricultural access Brazil, India and others must agree to a lower coefficient for progress to be made. Those three positions are coming closer together, which is why leaders have gone ahead with the meeting on 19 June. They would not have gone ahead with it at all unless there was a chance of reaching agreement. If they can reach agreement on headline numbers there or thereabouts, there is the possibility of concluding the agreement by the end of the year on the detail of it. There has been quite a lot of progressfar more than appearsjust in the past few weeks, but the outcome hangs in the balance. It is not correct, as some people think because the subject has not been covered, that the thing has gone down. It has not. The discussion that we had around the table at the end of the G8 summit was more upbeat than one might have expected. They are very close now, but a little extra movement is required by all three parts.

John Bercow: I welcome the Prime Minister's candid exchange with President Putin. Does he agree that the abuse of human rights in Chechnya, the sale last year of more than $34 million worth of arms to the murderous tyranny in Sudan and the use of the veto to stop concrete action against the brutal military dictatorship in Burma are an additional three good reasons why President Putin is not yet greeted with the uncritical acclaim of the international community that he apparently expects?

Tony Blair: Well, all these issues need to be examined. I think the most important thing is that Russia does understand that in the end there will be limits to the relationship that it is able to have with the rest of the world unless it is on the basis of shared values and shared principles. The problem is that of course people will want to deal with Russia and have to deal with Russia; we are engaged in talks with Russia on a number of different things that are of fundamental importance. I think the real question for Russia is this: does it want to maximise its relationship with the western world, in which case shared values and shared principles are the only basis on which to do it, or is it content to have it minimised? In the end, there is no point, as I have said before at the Dispatch Box, in our making empty threatswe are not in a position to deliver on those. What I tried to say to the President is that there is a real concern, as has been shown in the House today, and a sensible policy would take account of that. Of course, it is true that there are valid and legitimate points that Russia has to make about western policy towards Russia, but in the end those strategic interests can be gained only by recognising that certain values are fundamental to countries like ours and other western nations, and it is just not possible for them to be compromised.

Point of Order

Mark Harper: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have a named day question tabled for answer today about the rate at which the operational allowance paid to our brave servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan is due to be raised to take account of inflation. Imagine my surprise this morning, then, when I saw that the Press Association was reporting that reporters travelling with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to Baghdad have been given that information ahead of my question being answered. What can be done, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that Ministers, particularly the next Prime Minister, put their responsibilities to the House before the needs of the press?

Mr. Speaker: I can say to the hon. Gentleman that if his question has been answered properly today, I have no locus in this matter.

Opposition Day
	  
	[14th Allotted Day]

Iraq Inquiry

Mr. Speaker: We now come to the main business. I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

William Hague: I beg to move,
	That this House supports the principle that there should be an inquiry by an independent committee of Privy Counsellors to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and in its aftermath and to make recommendations on the lessons for the future.
	The subject of a major inquiry into the Iraq war was last debated in the House last October. Given the extent of public anxiety on the issue, the mounting problems being experienced on the ground and the widespread feeling across politics in principle for holding such an inquiry, I make no apology for returning to it now. The motion calls for agreement to the principle that an inquiry of the kind led by Lord Franks into the Falklands war should be established. It does not of itself specify the timing or any further details and it therefore provides the opportunity for the Government to make clearer their own thinking or to come up with their own proposals.
	A month ago, in a debate with some parallels to this one, we similarly proposed agreement in principle to the formalising of parliamentary approval for decisions to go to war. On that occasion, the Government responded constructively by accepting the principle and promising to produce detailed proposals and to consult the Opposition parties in the meantime. It was to be hoped that the Government would respond in similar fashion to this debate, which is in effect an invitation to them to set out in more detail inside the House their thinking on an inquiry that several Ministers have been happy to say they favour when outside the House.
	The last time we debated these matters, the Foreign Secretary managed to get through the debate without conceding that a major inquiry would be held, only for the Defence Secretary to say, within minutes of the end of the debate,
	When the time is right of course there will be such an inquiry.
	If the Government believe that there will be such an inquiry, there is no reason for them not to accept the principle of it today. That is all that the motion calls for. In addition, the Leader of the House said on 23 February:
	I think we have all made clear there will be an inquiry in due course,
	perhaps forgetting that the Foreign Secretary had not made that clear when the matter was debatedand, indeed, had refused to do so.
	As the candidates for the Labour deputy leadership have travelled the country, they have come under a great deal of pressure from Labour party activists, leading them all to say, in various ways, either that there will be an inquiry or that there should be one. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) said:
	I do see the case for an inquiry as part of an overall reconciliation with the British people and actually we have an opportunity over the next three months with the new leadership to turn the page on this.
	I therefore hope that, even though the Government have tabled more or less the same amendment to our motion as they did in October, the Foreign Secretary will recognise in her speech the gathering consensus in British politics and that she will decide to become part of it. Last time, she did not commit the Government to a major inquiry. If she does not do so this time, she will be at variance with many of her Cabinet colleagues.

Colin Challen: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept it from me, as someone who voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that I would welcome an inquiry? However, I do not support a seedy, narrowly focused inquiry with partisan intent, designed to embarrass the Government, but an inquiry that examines the history of our involvement in Iraq over many decades, and will reveal the duplicity of the west in funding and arming Saddam Hussein and preparing over many years his weapons of mass destruction, which were safely disposed of before we went to war.

William Hague: I can partly agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not propose any narrow or party-based inquiry, but a wide-ranging, Privy Council inquiry, which would not be conducted on party lines. It might stretch an inquiry too far to go back several decades. That might consume so much attention that much of its work would be obstructed. However, that is all to be debated.

Quentin Davies: I hope that my right hon. Friend agrees that timing is crucial and that we should face up to that. Does he also agree that it would be irresponsible to pull key people out of a continuing campaign to give evidence to an inquiry in London, impossible to publish a meaningful report without going into such matters as logistics, intelligence, infiltration and the strengths and weaknesses of our position, and clearly impossible to publish such information while the campaign proceeds? Does he therefore further agree that the only sensible course, if an inquiry is to be conducted, is to hold it after the last troops have been pulled out of Iraq?

William Hague: No, I do not agree, for reasons that I shall give later. Indeed, there are many historical precedents for taking an entirely different view from my hon. Friend, and I do.

Philip Davies: Two of my constituents, Sergeant Roberts and Flight Lieutenant Stead, died in Iraq. Sergeant Roberts did not have the proper body armour and Flight Lieutenant Stead's Hercules did not have the explosive-suppressant foam device that it should have had. Does my right hon. Friend anticipate that the equipment supplied to our armed forces in Iraq will be a prime focus of such an inquiry?

William Hague: Yes. My hon. Friend makes a fair point. There is no reason for such an inquiry not to consider such matters. Indeed, they should be taken into account.
	Other members of the Government have added to the case for an inquiryperhaps inadvertently. The Minister for Europe, who was Defence Secretary a few years ago, said in  The Guardian on 2 May:
	We didn't plan for the right sort of aftermath.
	On such matters as the disbandment of the Iraqi army, he revealed that the Government had argued against the United States, giving advice that Donald Rumsfeld or others ignored. In expounding his views on such matters, the Minister for Europe recognised that Parliament and people in general will want to know the answers to such questions if ministerial accountability is to mean anything at all.
	However, such accountability cannot be supplied by random interviews in  The Guardian it needs some kind of formal and powerful process. It has to be remembered that we are dealing with one of the most controversial and difficult issues of our times, and that those of us who fully supported the invasion have had to recognise that success in Iraq has proved progressively more elusive and the consequences of failure steadily more serious.
	What is more, we have all had to recognise that some of the mistakes made in the aftermath of the invasion, particularly in relation to the Iraqi army and the de-Ba'athification process, have had such far-reaching implications that any idea that the decision-making process that led to them can be free of exhaustive examination should now be set aside. This motion therefore seeks to establish the principle that such an inquiry should happen and in a way that allows its membership to draw on very senior diplomatic, military or political experience, to hold some of its sessions in confidence if it needs to and to summon all the papers and persons it deems necessary.

Chris Bryant: I believe that there should be an inquiry. It seems to me inevitable that, in the fulness of time, there will be an inquiry, but one of the key points is who should sit on it. The right hon. Gentleman suggests that it should be Privy Councillors. Although I have great respect for Privy Councillors, I have even more respect for Parliament. I believe that we should hold a parliamentary inquiry. The main reason for allowing it to be done by Privy Councillors is so that evidence can be taken at this difficult time on Privy Council terms. Surely, however, we need an inquiry that is fully in the open, which can happen only once our troops have returned.

William Hague: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but I disagree with it, as I would prefer a Privy Council inquiry. He should remember that membership of Parliament and the Privy Council overlaps but that having a Privy Council inquiry avoids having one conducted along party lines. If their expertise is required, people can be drawn into a Privy Council inquiry simply by being made Privy Councillors.

Angus MacNeil: Is the right hon. Gentleman disappointed that, a minute prior to this debate, the Prime Minister walked out of the Chamber, especially in view of an answer that he gave on 25 October last year to my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) when he said that he would be
	happy to debate Iraq at any time.[ Official Report, 25 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 1515.]?
	The Prime Minister then failed to turn up to a debate on Iraq exactly six days later. Today, he has missed it by one minute.

William Hague: Actually, he has missed a number of debates on Iraq by one minute, because it is his habit to leave the House as soon as any such debates begin. That is an unfortunate aspect of the Prime Minister's treatment of these matters.

John Redwood: Is one of my right hon. Friend's arguments for having a Privy Council inquiry the fact that much of the material is very sensitive and intelligence based, investigating why we went to war and how we handled the intelligence? What would be my right hon. Friend's advice to such an inquiry on the publication of its findings, given the sensitivity of the intelligence work?

William Hague: That is one of the arguments for having a Privy Council inquiry. It would have to make its own judgment, as would any inquiry at any stage, about how much of the information could be published. All the conclusions would certainly have to be published.

Tom Levitt: Last October, the right hon. Gentleman said that the inquiry should take place by the end of this parliamentary Sessionby October this year. This morning, he said that it should take place before the end of this calendar year; but this afternoon he is not putting a date on it at all. Why is he running away from it so quickly?

William Hague: I am putting a date on it. I have not been able to do so yet because I have taken so many interventions. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to proceed, he will not be disappointed, as I am coming to that very issue.
	I was explaining to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) the advantages of this approach. A formal public inquiry would be likely to be a much lengthier process. A Committee of this House, which I believe was proposed by the nationalist parties, would find it harder to benefit from external expertise. A Privy Council inquiry on the model of the Franks commission therefore rapidly recommends itself for this particular subject and it must be highly likely to be what will happen in the end. The Government should be able to accept that today. If the Leader of the House and the Defence Secretary were not referring to this kind of committee of Privy Councillors when they referred to there being an inquiry in the future, the Foreign Secretary needs to tell the House today what sort of inquiry they were they talking about.
	Given, however, that the Government's response does not look as if it is going to be as constructive or even as consistent as that, the amendment that the Government have tabled to our motion today merits examination. It argues
	that there have already been four separate independent committees of inquiry into military action in Iraq,
	and it declines
	to make a proposal for a further inquiry which would divert attention
	from
	improving the condition of Iraq
	at the moment.
	The weaknesses of those arguments are readily apparent. First, the argument that the existence of inquiries presents a diversion from vital tasks and that four of them have taken place already cannot both be true at the same timeunless the Government believe that the hearings of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee or the processes of the Butler report seriously hampered the work going on in Iraq. Secondly, these arguments do not prevent the Government from accepting the case for a suitably powerful inquiry in principle. Thirdly, the idea that the ground has been covered even remotely adequately by what they call the
	four separate independent committees of inquiry
	is nothing short of ludicrous.
	One of those inquiries was the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly; another was the Butler report, which focused only on intelligence on weapons of mass destruction; one of the others was the Foreign Affairs Committee report, published four years ago, on the decision to go to war in Iraq. Afterwards, the Committee published its views on the co-operation that it had received from the Government. In March 2004, it reported:
	We were hopeful that we would receive full cooperation from the government.
	However, it went on to state:
	Our Chairman wrote to the Prime Minister (requesting his attendance and that of Mr. Alastair Campbell); the Cabinet Office Intelligence Co-ordinator; the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; the Chief of Defence Intelligence; the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service; and the Director of GCHQ. None of them replied.
	It continued:
	We are confident that our inquiry would have been enhanced if our requests had been met. We agree with Alastair Campbell that 'It would have been very odd to have done this inquiry' without questioning him, and we regret that other witnesses, some of whom we suspect felt the same way as Mr. Campbell, were prevented from appearing.
	That is the true story of the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry, yet it is held up by the Government in their amendment as an example of an independent inquiry. It is unacceptable for the Government to refuse to co-operate fully with the inquiries that take place, and then to cite their work as an illustration of why further inquiries are unnecessary.
	The fact is that each of the inquiries that has taken place so far has provided a snapshot of one particular aspect of events in Iraq, but that their findings were sometimes arrived at without the full co-operation of the Government and are in general now out of date. There has been no investigation so far into the overall conduct of the war, the planning for the aftermath, or the implementation of such plans as may have existed for the rebuilding of the Iraqi state and society after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
	The argument that not even a proposal for an inquiry can be made because to do so would divert attention from the work going on in Iraq is merely the age-old argument of Ministers on the defensive. It amounts to saying that they are too busy to learn any lessons from what happened before, and it is an utterly bogus argument. Even if it were true, they would still be able to accept the principle of an inquiry, as called for in the motion before the House, but it is not true that our troops would be demoralised or that our enemies would take heart if we took the trouble to find out what has gone wrong. In a democratic society, the examination of successes and failures is a sign of strength, not of weakness. I have some experience of listening to soldiers serving in Iraq or who have recently returned from there, and they do an heroic job. They of all people are particularly anxious that the political decisions made in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion receive searching examination.
	I would say to my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), who intervened on me earlier, that in circumstances of war, indeed even of total war, our predecessors in this House have conducted the most vigorous debates about wartime debacles, whether in Norway in 1940 or in the Dardanelles in 1915. Indeed, in the latter case, they set up a major commission of inquiry while the first world war continued. They were even encouraged to do so by the Minister principally responsible, a certain Winston Churchill, who clearly had a stronger sense of the need for accountability and learning lessons than we sometimes see today.

Quentin Davies: The historical precedents that my right hon. Friend has just cited reinforce my position, rather than his. There was indeed an inquiry in 1915 into the Dardanelles, but only after the last British troops and sailors had left Suva bay. In 1940, we did indeed have a memorable debate in the House on Norway, but only after the last British troops and sailors had left Narvik. I am suggesting that we should hold an inquiry into Iraq only after our last troops have left the country.

William Hague: I am suggesting that when a war has been going on for this length of time, it is entirely valid to conduct such an inquiry. If it was good enough for Winston Churchill, it should be good enough for my hon. Friend.
	It remains our view on these Benches that such an inquiry should begin at an early date. For one thing, some of the events to be examined took place as long ago as 2002, and we will soon find that memories will have faded, letters will have been shredded and e-mails will have become untraceable.

Gordon Prentice: rose

William Hague: Let me carry on for a little while. I will come back to the hon. Gentleman later.
	Secondly, we have to be absolutely clear about some of the errors that have been made so that they are not repeated, for instance in Afghanistan. Thirdly, everyonesupporters of the war as well as its opponentsmust now recognise that the events of the last four years have damaged public trust and confidence in the political handling of such matters more than any events in our lifetime. A major inquiry and the debates that will necessarily flow from its findings are an essential precursor to rebuilding trust and confidence in the capacity of this or any Government to deal with situations in the middle east. Such rebuilding of public trust is a vital task, and should not be long delayed.
	In debates in the House of Lords, there has been a good deal of consensus, very much in line with what I propose. Former Foreign Secretaries such as my noble Friend Lord Hurd of Westwell and the noble Lord Owen have put the case for an inquiry to consider the workings of the machinery of government. Lord Owen said:
	There is now an overriding case to establish an inquiry...very similar to the Dardanelles Commission.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 29 June 2006; Vol. 683, c. 1350.]
	There is no doubt in my mind that the co-ordination of Government Departments in the aftermath of the invasion is a legitimate subject for examination. Last December, at the court martial of soldiers from the Queens Lancashire Regiment, the Army officer who led British forces in Basra following the invasion, Brigadier Moore, said that in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion his 4,000 men were,
	Not supported by any of the other government departments, other than their own.
	He said:
	The Foreign Office was there but largely inactive. No one from the Department of Trade and Industry was there. So the Brigade had to try and regenerate the economy, establish a judiciary, as well as security and stability. We were the only show in town. There was a lack of support across the rest of Whitehall.
	We should, of course, recognise the successes in Iraq over the past few years: Saddam Hussein has been removed, democratic elections have been held, and parts of the country are relatively stable. Overall, however, Iraq today is not the Iraq that we hoped for in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam. I have mentioned the need to look into the major decisions, generally made in Washington, but undoubtedly with some kind of British input, either for or againstthe de-Ba'athification and disbandment of the army. Those were of huge importance, and much needs to be learned from them about how to influence decisions when conducting operations alongside a superpower.
	Then there were the immense problems in delivering improvements to the infrastructure of Iraq. The United States has conducted a wide range of searching inquiries, and notably has not been afraid to do so in spite of its massive engagement in fighting in Iraq. The American Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has produced 60 audit reports and given testimony to Congress on at least 18 occasions, but there is no equivalent examination of the more than 350 million of British taxpayers' money disbursed by the Department for International Development since 2003. The inquiry begun by the International Development Committee in 2004 was discontinued after the last election, yet the need to learn lessons from the difficulties faced is urgent and serious.
	For all those reasons, none of us in the House should turn our face against a major inquiry into what has happened. This Government and future Governments need to learn the lessons, and the country needs to be assured that they will have done so. No adequate reason remains for the Government to refuse to establish such an inquiry to begin its work in the near future, but there is even less reason for them to disagree with the motion before the House today calling for such an inquiry in principle. Their response could be a constructive one, as on war powers, accepting that principle and opening the way for cross-party discussion to bring it about. Instead, if the Government's amendment is anything to go by, the Foreign Secretary looks set to maintain the Government's refusal to make any proposal for an inquiry. That position is inconsistent with the many comments already made by Ministers, incompatible with learning vital lessons as fully and as rapidly as possible, and inadequate to the scale of the immensely difficult issues that we now face.

Margaret Beckett: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	notes the Resolution of 31st October 2006; recognises that there have already been four separate independent committees of inquiry into military action in Iraq; further recognises the importance of learning all possible lessons from military action in Iraq and its aftermath; and therefore declines at this time, whilst the whole effort of the Government and the armed forces is directed towards improving the condition of Iraq, to make a proposal for a further inquiry which would divert attention from this vital task.
	The motion before the House today calls for a new inquiry
	to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq...in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and in its aftermath.
	It also proposes that the House decide now that such an inquiry should be conducted in the same way as the Franks inquiry into the Falklands war. Those with particularly long memories will recall that only about six months ago we had a debate here on a very similar motion. They may also recall that during that debate I made plain the Government's view that there would come a time when these issues would be explored in the round so that we could learn whatever lessons could be learnt from them. However, I also made clear our view that while our troops remained actively engaged and facing real danger in Iraq, it would be wrong to launch such an inquiry. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) that there is no precedent.
	Since then both Houses of Parliament have enjoyed substantive debates on Iraq, including debates in the House on 12 December and 24 January. On 11 January my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence and I gave evidence to a lengthy joint session of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees, and on 21 February the Prime Minister delivered a detailed statement to the House on the Government's policy on Iraq.

Malcolm Rifkind: The Foreign Secretary says that she is unhappy with the idea of an inquiry while British troops remain in Iraq. She will be aware that it is widely assumed that even if the vast majority of British troops are withdrawn over the next 12 months, it is highly likely that a significant number will remain to carry out training functions or for other purposes, possibly for several years. Is she implying that no inquiry could be considered by the Government until the last British soldier had left Iraq?

Margaret Beckett: I am not implying anything. I am simply saying very clearly and straightforwardly, as I did when this matter was last raised, that I do not think that now, when our troops are very much engaged, is the time to make the decision that has been proposed to the House.
	Since we debated the issue here in October, the Government's position on an inquiry has been restated a number of times by, for instance, my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Defence and the Leader of the House, and indeed by the Prime Minister. Nothing has happened since last October to change our position. More than 5,000 British troops do remain in Iraq, where they continue to be engaged in extremely difficult and dangerous work in trying to build a better future for the Iraqi people. Only last week, Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari paid tribute to them and stressed the importance of what they were doing for his country. I too pay tribute to their courage and professionalism.
	I know that the House will join me in offering condolences to the family of Corporal Rodney Wilson, who was killed in Basra last week. He was the 150th soldier to lose his life in Iraq since 2003. I also pay tribute to two other servicemen, Lance-Corporal Paul Sandford and Guardsman Neil Downes, both of whom lost their lives in Helmand province in Afghanistan last week. I know that I take the whole House with me in sending our condolences to their families.
	Against that background, it should be no surprise to anyone that the Government's position has not changed. We continue to believe that agreeing to set such an inquiry in motion at this moment would be not only premature but, much worse, self-indulgent. By contrast, the Opposition's approach to the issue seems at best confused and at worst opportunistic. Sadly, that is not new. In October, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said:
	To begin an inquiry now
	that is, on that date in October
	would...be premature.
	He then promptly voted for a motion that implied that such an inquiry should be launched immediately. To be fair, he said that an inquiry should instead commence in
	the next Session of Parliament.[ Official Report, 31 October 2006; Vol.451, c.183-4.]
	He did not point out that, at the time, that was two weeks away. The motion that the right hon. Gentleman has tabled today makes no reference at all to the timing of such an inquiry, but does attemptalthough he made only a passing reference to thisto commit the House to a very specific proposal for its forum.
	The right hon. Gentleman therefore appears to have accepted the argument that we advanced last October that now is perhaps not the time for his proposal to take effect. For our part, we also remain of the view that this is not the time to send a signal of potential disunitywhether it be to the courageous Government and people of Iraq, or to our own immensely courageous armed forcesor indeed to commit ourselves to an inquiry in the form that the right hon. Gentleman has proposed. I accept, of course, that that was the form of the Falklands inquirybut in the 25 years since the Falklands war, important things have changed in the way in which Parliament works.

Lembit �pik: I understand the right hon. Lady's reasoning, although I may differ with her about the case for an inquiry now. Does she nevertheless agree that at some point we have to get clarity on some of the big issues? For example, there is a huge debate about how many people have been killed in Iraq since 2003. Does she agree that at some point we need to get clarity, and that we are arguing about a timetable rather than about the fundamental case for finding out the truth about those vexing questions?

Margaret Beckett: Judging from the range of different statistical methods that people have used, I am not sure whether, on that matter, any inquiry will ever come to a conclusion of which there will be general acceptancebut of course I share the view that it is important that we remember the civilian casualties that have occurred during the conflict, and that we do everything we can both to minimise them and to encourage the accurate keeping of records, so that understanding is not lost.

Chris Bryant: I am sure the Foreign Secretary would accept that it is almost certain that when eventually there is an inquiry, all parliamentarians will want to examine force protection, whether involving body armour or the physical environment in which our troops are protected. Does she agree that it will be difficult to do that in an open environment now, without further compromising the security of our troops?

Margaret Beckett: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Those who are approaching the debate with an open mind and a proper realisation of the dangers of the course of action being urged on us by the Opposition will certainly take heed of his remarks.

Gordon Prentice: Why is it necessary to continue to block the memoirs of Jeremy Greenstock, our man in Baghdad, when his American counterpart, Paul Bremer, published his memoirs a couple of years ago and the sky did not fall in?

Margaret Beckett: I am not responsible for the decisions of the American Government. They decided to allow Mr. Bremer to publish his memoirs. We have not made such a decision.
	As I say, events have changed

John Redwood: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Margaret Beckett: I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, and then I must get on.

John Redwood: Why is it not possible to accept the proposal in principle, while leaving it to the Government to choose the date for dealing with all the issues that the Foreign Secretary has raised? To refuse that makes the Government look as if they have something to hide, and I am sure that they would not want that coming across as their true view.

Margaret Beckett: That is complete nonsense. As I say, we are being urged now to commit ourselves not only to the principle but to a form of inquiry. From the words of the shadow Foreign SecretaryI nearly called him the Leader of the Opposition; perhaps I would be percipient in saying thatit is clear that he envisages an inquiry taking place in the quite near future. As I say, it is not sensible to put that proposal before the House at this time.
	We now have a framework of Select Committeeswhose role and resources, incidentally, have been substantially strengthened under this Government, despite the nonsense talked about our approach to Parliament. They carry out independent inquiries, as they already have into different aspects of our involvement in Iraq.
	I argued in October that the situation in Iraq was too delicate for us to turn our attention away from the immediate task of how best we could help the Iraqi people here and now. I make no apology for saying the same today. Indeed I remind the House that only a few days ago the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq urged us to concentrate our minds, will and interests on continuing to work with the people there to give top priority to rebuilding and helping to reform the situation in Iraq.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Have the Government received any representations from past or current military commanders that an inquiry of this kind would be unwise or dangerous?

Margaret Beckett: I am not aware of having received any representations from military commanders either for or against an inquiry. However, I have no doubt whatever that it would be possible to find both former military commanders who took the view expressed by my hon. and learned Friend, and those who took a different view. I say that without implying any discredit to military commanders, as that is a perfectly reasonable state of affairs among human beings.

Angus MacNeil: Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett: No, I must get on.
	My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence would have liked to take part in this debate, but he is today in Baghdad with the Chancellor, focusing precisely on what can be done today and in the critical months ahead to help the people of Iraq.
	As all Members know, Iraq still faces a daunting array of political, security and economic challenges of a kind with which any Government in the worldlet alone a Government who have been in existence for only a little over a yearwould struggle to deal. The Prime Minister set out in detail in his 21 February statement our analysis of the challenges and our strategy for helping the Iraqis to tackle them. I do not intend to repeat that today, but I shall seek briefly to explain why the next few months in Iraq are especially crucial, and why the Government want to maintain a clear focus on the here and now.
	With support from the coalition, the Iraqi Government have in recent months launched a major fresh effort to restore security to Baghdad and neighbouring areas of Iraq. In the coming months, critical judgments will need to be made about the success of the effort. The commander of the multinational force, General Petraeus, is due to deliver his assessment of progress in Washington in September.
	It is still too early to make definitive judgments on the success of the initiative. The last of the additional US units being brought into Baghdad will arrive only this month. So far, there have been significant falls in the recorded rates of sectarian murders in Baghdad, and more recently there have been impressive reductions in recorded violence in Anbar province, which was hitherto the most violent part of the country. However, there have also been further atrocious suicide bombings in and around Baghdad, and calculated attacks on symbolic targets in the capital, such as bridges and the Parliament building itself, in a deliberate attempt to induce a sense of despair both in the Iraqi people and in those in the international community working to help them.
	The initiative will be judged not solely on its immediate impact on the security environment, but on the extent to which Iraq's political leaders manage to make progress on the fundamental political issues that underlie so much of the violence. It is crucial that Iraq's leaders reach early agreement on legislation governing the future of the oil and gas sector, and on how to share the huge potential wealth from the sector equitably among all communities in Iraq. That alone could prove a powerful force for national unity and reconciliation.
	It is essential that agreement be reached on reforms to the process of de-Ba'athification, which has become the cause of much division. It is important that the Iraqi Parliament pass legislation setting a date for provincial elections, to allow a new and more representative generation of political leaders to emerge across the country. All these steps, along with others, must culminate in an agreement on revisions to the new Iraqi constitution that give all communities in Iraq a firm sense of commitment to the country's future.
	These are all immensely difficult issues; were that not so, they would have been solved long ago. It is imperative for the future of the country that Iraq's leaders make headway on them over the coming months.

John Baron: We hope that the inquiry will be wide ranging, and that it will include an examination of how the intelligence was assessed and presented. In the meantime, however, I have a question. The main justification for war was the weapons of mass destruction argument, and that ultimately proved to be wrong. Who does the Foreign Secretary think is to blame for that? Does the blame lie with the intelligence services for their assessment of the intelligence that came in, or with the politicians for their presentation of the evidence?

Margaret Beckett: The hon. Gentleman has just given an extremely good example of why it would not exactly promote the cause of looking to the future and rebuilding Iraq to engage in the kind of dialogue that he wants at this time. He is, of course, right to say that these are issues of importance, but I recall that in the last debate on this subject one of my hon. Friends reported to the House a discussion at which he had been present with Dr. el-Baradei. Dr. el-Baradei confirmed to those present at that meeting that in March 2003, he had himself believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that it was capable of using, and likely to try to use. So the notion that this was somehow all made up by the Government of the United Kingdom bears no examination at all. As I said, this is a good example of how the Conservative party would prefer to dwell on the past, rather than looking to what is happening now in Iraq and working with it.

Angus MacNeil: rose

Boris Johnson: rose

Tobias Ellwood: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Margaret Beckett: No, I must get on.
	In the south, we have already been able to hand over responsibility for security to the Iraqi authorities in three of the four provinces in our area of operation. British troops and civilian staff are now engaged in an intensive drive to bring the last of these provinces, Basra, to the point at which security responsibility can be handed over there, too. At this critical juncture, when Iraq's future clearly hangs in the balance, it would be wrongplainly and simply wrongfor us to divert our focus from the tasks that need completing now, and again turn our gaze backwards.
	Let us have no pretence that this is an innocuous little motion that will have no effect on the atmosphere in, or background against which, these ongoing, highly difficult challenges have to be faced and met. If that were so, the shadow Foreign Secretary would not have troubled to table it. He made it clear last October that he hoped that the inquiry he proposed at that time would begin in this Session of Parliament. We believed then, and we believe now, that to carry a motion such as this would be an unnecessary and damaging diversion of effort, focus and attention.

Boris Johnson: rose

Tobias Ellwood: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Margaret Beckett: No.
	All our time and energy is badly needed now for addressing the challenges of the present, as the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq reminded us only the other day. It is our responsibility to the people of Iraq that should receive our complete focus and attention in the critical months ahead.
	When we discussed this issue in October, some Members pointed out that only a few days beforehand, representatives of the Iraqi Government had urged us to concentrate on the future. It was also pointed outto pick up the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen)that the history of Iraq did not begin with the invasion.
	As I said in October, I believe that we also have a responsibility to think very carefully about the signals that we send out from this House todaysignals that will be closely followed in Iraq and around the world. It is critical that we do not convey to others the impression that this country's commitment to Iraq is weakening at a critical moment, and that we are about to turn away into a period of self-indulgent introspection. So I hope that all Members of this House will support the amendment that the Government have tabled.

Michael Moore: The Foreign Secretary's statement that nothing has changed in the Government's position since October will not have been a surprise; none the less, it will be a disappointment to the House. It appears to all intents and purposes that the Government are still trying to avoid an inquiry, while hinting that there will be one. They are simply ducking the question of when.
	The Foreign Secretary said that many Ministers and others have made themselves available to the House in debates, during statements and at questions. Those are worthwhile and welcome occasions, but they are surely no substitute for a thoroughgoing inquiry into what led up to the war in Iraq and what has happened since. The motion today simply asks for the principle to be acceptedlittle more than that. I should have thought that it was not beyond the Government to accept that. The motion has echoes of the nationalist text that we debated at the end of October, and there is nothing wrong with that, since the need for a proper inquiry into the follies and misjudgments that took us into the war in Iraq is even more pressing now than it was then. In the spirit of cross-party unity, which was evident on both sides of the House on that day, the Liberal Democrats will support the motion when it comes to a Division later.
	Before I go on to our reasons why, however, let me add the support of my right hon. and hon. Friends to the tributes already properly and generously paid by the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), to our armed forces. Throughout the conflict, as in so many others, the men and women of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force have shown the highest levels of professionalism, dedication and commitment that could ever be expected of them. Their bravery and courage is beyond question and, indeed, many have paid the highest price. Many more have suffered or continue to suffer the consequences of their time in Iraq. We should never lose sight of those sacrifices.
	Since we last debated the call for an inquiry in October 2006, we have seen the deadliest month for UK forces since the initial invasion, with 12 servicemen killed in April. In total, 30 more UK personnel have been killed since October 2006, and as the Foreign Secretary sadly marked, 150 servicemen and women have lost their lives in Iraq serving their country. Our thoughts are ever with them and the families and friends who are so tragically affected.
	In the wider context, we should not forget the toll on American and other coalition service personnel, with US casualties nearing 3,500 and other coalition casualties nearing 130. That is all indicative of a desperate security situation. In written answers to me, the Secretary of State for Defence has detailed how attacks on UK-led, multinational forces have risen sharply since our last debate. From that date until the end of April, there were more than 1,300 attacks, compared with just over 500 in the previous six months. That is in the context of Operation Sinbad and the greater levels of confrontation that were inevitably involved, but at the very least, it highlights the ferocity of the situation even in southern Iraq. As we have been reminded only too recently, the dangers there extend to kidnapping, with the fate of the five latest hostages captured at the end of May still unknown. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, too.
	We may never know how many Iraqis have been kidnapped, and as the Foreign Secretary said, we will never know the true figure for civilian casualties in Iraq. There have been many estimates, and the United Nations has reported that 34,000 were killed last year alone. For millions of people, life and normality have been destroyed.
	The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that there are approximately 2 million internally displaced people in Iraq. There are another 2 million Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries, particularly in Syria and Jordan. Many people lack support, and the host countries are struggling to deal with them. According to a written answer that I received from the Secretary of State for International Development,
	DFID has provided 10 million to support emergency relief and other services to displaced and vulnerable Iraqis[ Official Report, 7 June 2007; Vol. 465, c. 685W.]
	this year. However, if I understand the answer correctly, that is in Iraq and throughout the region. In the context of the estimated 5 billion cost of the Iraq war to the United Kingdom, it is a tiny amount.
	Our obligations surely extend to the many former translators and interpreters who have had to flee Iraq and, according to Human Rights Watch, have been denied any assistance in reaching the UK or in obtaining asylum in this country. Those people put their lives on the line alongside British personnel, and their lives are still on the line. Of all the people affected, surely we have a particular responsibility to them.
	In Iraq, reconstruction has failed to live up to the large amounts of money poured in. To give just two examples, unemployment is commonly as high as 40 per cent. and electricity supplies in most of the country have barely improved on pre-war levels and have actually fallen below those levels in Baghdad.
	Of course, there are achievements: democratic elections held in December 2005 and the formation of the national unity Government last year. As we have been reminded, security has been handed over in three of the four Iraqi provinces under British control, but those milestones have been overshadowed by the security situation and the failure of the reconstruction efforts so far. Even those of us who opposed the conflict when the House voted in March 2003that opposition was unanimous on the Liberal Democrat Benchesdid not foresee the scale of the disaster that continues to unfold in Iraq. The aftermath of the conflict is dire and we need to get to grips with why things have come to this and why we got into the mess in the first place.
	The first requirement of an inquiry will be to learn the lessons and, where appropriate, apply them to the ongoing conflict. Surely, we will also learn lessons to apply to other current and future conflicts, but at the heart of the process, as the shadow Foreign Secretary set out, must be the need to ensure proper parliamentary oversight of the Executive, which has until now been utterly inadequate, despite the efforts of Members from all parties to do their bit. The oft-quoted Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, was right when he said that
	history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial war-fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than...planning.
	More is required of an inquiry than investigation of what happened to planning for the aftermath; we still need to understand the fundamentals, such as the purpose of the intervention. Was it simply to seek compliance with UN resolutions or, as many leaks, commentators and suspicions suggest, to enable regime change? When was the actual decision taken and when was British commitment given to the United States President? What exactly was the UK input to coalition strategy beforehand and what has it been since? What of the intelligence? Issues remain about both its gathering and processing, which allowed the creation of the flawed prospectus. We are no nearer a full understanding of the political oversight of intelligence processing. In that respect, the early draft of the September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, prepared by Mr. John Williams of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is important evidence, which the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) and others have been trying to obtain. It should be released so that we can make a proper assessment of what decisions were taken and when. More significantly, we still need to understand the role of the Attorney-General and why he changed his advice over a few fateful days in 2003, knowing as we do now that he was more ambiguous in his initial advice to the Prime Minister on 13 March compared to that presented to Parliament on 17 March. Those are just some of the issues that will need to be considered by an inquiry, but it is important that we are clear about its type and powers.
	As a party, we have previously set out the case for a full public inquiry, which would have the widest possible scope, to investigate all relevant aspects of the decision to go to war in Iraq, but we are happy to support the mechanism proposed by the shadow Foreign Secretary on the basis that the membership reflects the range of expertise required and that the powers will be clear.

Tobias Ellwood: I am intrigued by the Liberal Democrat position. Had Britain not supported the war it is likely that we would have been invited to help with the peacekeeping efforts under resolution 1483. Can the hon. Gentleman tell the Chamber whether the Liberal Democrats would have supported Britain's participation in peacekeeping had we not been participating in the initial war-fighting?

Michael Moore: That is a strange hypothetical question.

Alan Beith: What if there had been no war?

Michael Moore: Indeed. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) may want to reconsider his position, given how he and his party voted at the time of the initial invasion. I am perfectly happy with what our party decided at that time and since.
	What is not clear from what we have heard today and on previous occasions is the Government's position on an inquiry. As I said at the outset, there are hints of a future inquiry but the Foreign Secretary will have to forgive us if we are a little sceptical about that, not least because the Government oppose today's initiative because, they have argued, it is unnecessary, diversionary and might have an impact on morale. I want to deal with those issues.
	Of course there have been inquiries, but the shadow Foreign Secretary demolished the argument that they were independent and comprehensive. There are well-established gaps and shortcomings in all the inquiries, in terms of both their remit and the information that was made available to them. Crucially, there has been no specific investigation of the political decision-making process that led to the decision to go to war. As for the timing of the proposed inquiry, there is an urgent need to learn the lessons now, and to apply them to what we are doing in Iraq and to other current and future operations. As others have observed, waiting until the end of the conflict is hard when that has not been defined and when victory in the conflict was claimed and declared four years ago.

Stewart Jackson: Does the hon. Gentleman share my incredulous state of mind that the Foreign Secretary should dismiss the Opposition motion as self-indulgent given that the United States, which has a much stronger Executive branch, has suffered more casualties and is still engaged on the war front, has had a robust analysis through the Baker-Hamilton report as well as inquiries in both Houses of the US Congress? Does that not equally shoot down the Foreign Secretary's rather tenuous argument?

Michael Moore: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which slightly unhelpfully anticipates a point that I shall come to in due course. Such is the way of debate in this place.
	Let me turn to the issue of diverting Ministers' time. I do not want to be completely facetious, but the Prime Minister will be a key witness to the inquiry and by happy chance he will be released from the challenges of office in a few weeks' time, so the inquiry ought to be able to get off to a flying start any time soon. Presumably the new Prime Minister will want to be fully briefed and informed, since it seems unlikely that under current Cabinet arrangements he will feel that he was then, and is now, fully in the picture.
	We have to take seriously any potential impact on morale. As the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) has just said, we should look across the Atlantic. The United States has more people committed to Iraq, yet debates there have not been stymied one bit, whether in Congress or in the course of the Baker-Hamilton inquiry last year. More importantly, the armed forces in this country expect us to ask such questions and to find out the truthnot only those who have come back from Iraq and left the Army or the Territorial Army but, as one can see from the blogs, those who are serving, too.

Andrew Murrison: Does the hon. Gentleman share my observation, as someone who served in Iraq in 2003, that most servicemen there will stand aghast at the argument that the Foreign Secretary has deployed that in some way such an investigation will damage their morale? They are far more likely to have their morale damaged by the lack of body armour, tanks that clog up in the desert sand and boots that melt in the heat of the same. They will look to us as their Parliament to start such an investigation, because they cannot speak for themselves.

Michael Moore: The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point, all the more so because he served in Iraq. The House ought to pay tribute to him and other right hon. and hon. Members, particularly from the Conservative Benches, who did their duty at that time. I know that people from all over the House did so.
	Beyond the expectations of our armed forces, we see senior figures of our armed forcesthere is none more senior than General Dannattbeing frank and open about some of the failings and about what needs to be done. I suspect that people like him know more about morale than most of us in the Chamber. The debate is going on in every part of British life, not least in the media and as part of independent inquiries, such as that recently launched by the Foreign Policy Centre and Channel 4. That inquiry is chaired by an impeccable cross-party group with significant expertise that includes Baroness Jay, Lord King and Lord Ashdown. Parliament should not be left behind in the debate. In fact, certain Labour Members are already arguing for an inquiry as the contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour party hots up. It seems that it is open season for everyone, except those of us who were elected to scrutinise the Executive.
	Earlier this year, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) set out our view that British forces should now leave Iraq. Nothing has happened in the meantime to change our view. We believe that the issue should be one of the first priorities for our new Prime Minister, not least following his visit to Baghdad. While I hope that we will return to the specifics of future policy on Iraq on a later date, we believe that it is time for us to prepare to leave and to learn the lessons.
	In the debate on the need for an inquiry in October, the Foreign Secretary said:
	I have no doubt that there will come a time when we will want to look at the lessons learned from our full experience in Iraq, just as we have from every other major conflict in the past.[ Official Report, 31 October 2006; Vol. 451, c. 181.]
	Nearly eight months on, the need for that inquiry is more pressing than ever.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 14-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches. However, due to what I could describe as hon. Members' late surge of interest in participating in the debate, that might be a touch on the generous side. I hope that hon. Members will bear that in mind when they address the House.

Jeremy Corbyn: It is a good thing that Parliament is debating the war in Iraq. The war has gone on longer than the second world war went on in Europe and has aroused the greatest passions ever among the public in Britain and the United States. It is worth reminding the House that nearly 2 million people took to the streets of London in February 2003 to demonstrate their views on British participation in that war. They took to the streets not in support of Saddam Hussein, but to oppose something that they believed to be an illegal war and because they wanted Parliament to listen to what they had to say.
	Frankly, it is absurd to argue that we should not hold an inquiry into the causes of a war that has cost the lives of many people and caused huge controversy throughout the world. It is the job of Parliament and our duty as parliamentarians to investigate what is going on, to challenge what the Executive are doing and to try to represent public opinion as best we can.
	In opposing the motion, the Foreign Secretary pointed out that inquiries had been carried out by the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Defence Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee and that we had also had the Hutton and Butler inquiries. All those inquiries suffered from degrees of inadequacy. As the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) pointed out, in one case, a considerable number of fairly key witnesses refused to give any evidence whatsoever to the inquiries, which meant that the inquiries' possible achievements were severely limited. Entirely legitimate questions remain that must be asked by an inquiry: how did we get involved in the war; how bad has the situation in Iraq become; and where does this take us in the future?
	The Conservative motion is inadequate because I do not think that a Privy Council inquiry is necessarily the ideal format. Such an inquiry would exclude people who were not members of the Privy Council, even though the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks suggested that several people could become Privy Councillors instantly so that they could take part in the inquiry [ Interruption. ] It would be extremely unlikely that my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and I would be invited to become members of the Privy Council under that procedure. However, while there are clearly inadequacies in the motion, it is fair enough.
	A further inadequacy of the motion is the fact that it does not set a date by which the inquiry should take place; nevertheless, I will support the motion. I urge other colleagues to support it because that would mean that Parliament would stress that it is our duty to investigate what is going on and to present a credible report to the British public on how we got involved in the war and, above all, how we will get out of it.
	A large number of issues need to be examined. I think that I have been in the House on every single occasion when there has been a debate on Iraq since at least 1990. We have heard just about every allegation that could ever be made about the situation in Iraq. We were told that there were weapons of mass destruction, and that there was a 45-minute danger period, but that turned out not to be the case. Hans Blix and Mohamed el-Baradei were prevented from returning to Iraq in January 2003, although they were undertaking an effective weapons inspection there. I would like to hear from both of them what exactly the terms were under which they were prevented from returning. There are many other questions, too.
	Crucially, we need to know what the genesis was of foreign policy after 2001. In September 2001, the Prime Minister said that we should stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, whatever it chose to do, and whatever problems it faceda very brave thing to say. It was not clear then exactly what he had in mind, and where that would lead us. It led rapidly to a war in Afghanistan, and later a very strange meeting took place in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. When the Prime Minister ceases to hold that office, he should be invited to give evidence on that meeting. Was an undertaking given to President Bush that Britain would be involved in a war against Iraq, even though there was no evidence whatever that Iraq was involved with al-Qaeda or with the war in Afghanistan?
	I say that not because I am in any sense an apologist for the regime of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks seemed to reject the notion that the inquiry should go into relations with Iraq before 1990, and I disagree with him on that point. It is important that it does consider relations with Iraq before then, because I seem to recall this House quite happily approving the sale of arms to Iraq in the late 1980s. I also recall that there was participation in the Baghdad arms fair, even after the tragedy of Halabja. There must be serious inquiries about all those thingsnot for some academic purpose, but so that we can try to make sense of what has happened.
	I know that there are people in the House who do not accept the estimate that  The Lancet made in its examination of the death toll in Iraq, but there has been no creditable rebuttal of it. Its estimate is that 650,000 civilians have died in Iraq. I am not accusing British, American or any other coalition forces of causing all those deaths, but I am saying that the foreign policy decisions, taken principally by Britain and the United States, to pursue a war that had no legal basis led to the chaos that led to that loss of life. More than 3,000 United States servicemen and women have died, and last week, tragically, someone became the 150th British soldier to lose his life.
	In my constituency, there are people who fled to this country to escape from Saddam Hussein, and now there are people there who fled to this country to escape the chaos of what life is like now in Iraq, and the dangers there. Last week, I was talking to a number of people from Iraq who came to this country and who, tragically, are threatened with deportation to Iraq, They tell me that for months on end they could not go out of their house without facing the threat of being killed in the streets. The electricity and water did not work, they did not enjoy normal safety levels, and normal society and normal life did not work. All that has happened since the invasion all those years ago and, as I said earlier, we are talking about a period of greater length than Europe's second world war.
	The question of what happens in future in Iraq must also be considered. There was a report yesterday in  The Observer entitled Iraqi government threatens arrest for leaders of striking oil workers. It said:
	Workers are objecting to Iraq's proposed hydrocarbon law, which unions claim will amount to privatisation of the industry, allowing Western oil executives to sit on an oil ministry council which will approve contracts under which foreign companies can operate.
	That, in conjunction with the threat of arrest against Hassan Juma'a and other leaders of the Iraqi oil workers, may be one of the kernels that points to the real causes of the war in Iraq: the removal of large amounts of Iraqi natural resources into the hands of western companies. The oil law proposed in Iraq bears a horrible resemblance to the oil law introduced in Iran in 1952 after the coup that installed the Shah in power, and British oil companies did very well out of that.
	Finally, on the question of foreign policy and what goes with it, the Prime Minister, ever since he took us into the war in Iraq, has developed his ideas on foreign policy a great deal. He has given many lectures around the world about what he calls humanitarian intervention. We should learn the following lessons: we should consider, first, whether or not the war was legal; secondly, whether it did, or did not, breach the UN charter; and, thirdly, to avoid future conflicts, perhaps we should give more support to the UN charter and the principles of international law. I am concerned that in the debate about Iraq we often forget that that war started after the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Many far-thinking people in the Ministry of Defence and elsewhere believe that we should withdraw from Iraq to put even greater resources into Afghanistan. The road to peace in the world does not lie in one war after another, after another, after another, with all the attendant attacks on our own, and other people's, civil liberties that emanate from that. Surely, we have a big lesson to learn about how to bring about peace in the world.
	When we come to vote on the motion, we can do so, whether or not we believe in the war in Iraq. I urge Members of Parliament to think a little bit further. We were elected to the House because we live in a democracy: we were sent here to hold the Executive to account, whether they belong to the same party as us or not. It is the job of Parliament to find out the truth, and to try to inform the public better how the war came about. It is therefore entirely appropriate that Parliament should vote for an inquiry, which should be conducted in depth. It should be detailed, public and, above all, far reaching so that we can learn the lessons of all those tens of thousands of people who have lost their lives in Iraq and so that at least that kind of disaster and tragedy could not be repeated somewhere else in some other oil-rich part of the globe.

Malcolm Rifkind: May I begin by referring to an interest, declared in the Register, in a company that operates in Iraq?
	I support very strongly the proposal for an inquiry made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), because the Prime Minister has shown that essentially he is still in denial about the policy over which he has presided for the past few years. On several occasions, I have heard him, when challenged with the drama, trauma and mess that have developed in Iraq, say, I accept full responsibility. Usually, when someone says that, they follow it with a second phraseAnd I acknowledge that we made a mess of this, or, It's all gone terribly wrong. The Prime Minister is an unusual phenomenon, because he says, I accept full responsibility and I got it right. I continue to defend what I did. Not only is that a rather eccentric approach but it damages the Government's overall credibility regarding future policy in Iraq, and not simply the justification for the past.
	We saw a remarkable example of the Prime Minister's tendency towards double- speak in an article for which he was interviewed in  The Economist on 31 May. It was headed, What I've learned, but when one read it, one discovered that he had not learned very much. He said:
	It is said that by removing Saddam or the Talibanregimes that were authoritarian but also kept a form of orderthe plight of Iraqis and Afghans has worsened, and terrorism has been allowed to grow.
	He went on to say:
	This is a seductive but dangerous argument. Work out what it really means. It means that because these reactionary and evil forces will fight hard, through terrorism, to prevent those countries and their people getting on their feet after the dictatorships are removed, we should leave the people under the dictatorship.
	Considered just in those narrow terms, what the Prime Minister said was entirely logical, but the premise from which he proceeded was utterly wrong. I am reminded of the remark that Harold Macmillan once made about Sir John Simon, when he said that the hon. Gentleman has such a logical frame of mind that starting from a false premise, he moves inexorably to the wrong conclusion. That is what the Prime Minister has done. He is no fool. He knows perfectly well that when any Government, including a British Government, are considering intervention through military means against a country that has not attacked them, no Government, including the present British Government, simply look at the human rights record of the Government concerned.
	Of course, that is an important consideration. So, too, is the question whether we will win in a conventional conflict and the war will be over quickly. But one also looks at all the wider implications of invading a country and implementing a policy of regime change. I ignore for the moment the fact that regime change was never part of the justification for the war and, indeed, could not have been because it would have been against international law. Even if it had been, the British Government, as we well know, have been disinclined to intervene in other countries that have just as bad a human rights record. Otherwise we would have had British troops in Zimbabwe getting rid of Mr. Mugabe. No doubt the United States would have gone into Castro's Cuba many years ago, and might have gone into North Korea more recently.
	In each and every case, the reason was not a judgment about the human rights record or a judgment as to whether a conventional war would be won. It was a wider and a very wise judgment as to the overall implications and consequences of such an invasion of a country that had not attacked us. Sometimes the arguments are valid. I pay credit to what the Government did in Sierra Leone. There was a case where there was a strong human rights argument, but where the consequences of our intervention clearly have been beneficial.
	That could have been anticipated, and was anticipated, and the Government were right to act. I happen to think that they were right in Afghanistan, but the whole point about Iraq is that most of what has happened since the invasion was not only predictable, but was predicted. It is not the Prime Minister's integrity or honesty that I question; it is the basic competenceincompetence, I should sayand the poor judgment that guided his actions over that period. That is why an inquiry is essential now.
	So much for the past. Where do we go from here with regard to the British presence in Iraq? Even those of us who were against the war cannot say that because we were against it, British troops must come out at the first available opportunity. Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia made a very wise remark. He said that the coalition must realise that if they go in uninvited, they cannot just leave uninvited. We have contributed to the mess in Iraq. It has a more democratic Government than it has ever had. That Government want us to retain a presence in Iraq, and they are entitled to have that view taken into account.
	What arguments should be used? There are three questions that we have to address. First, are we delivering the policy in Basra, in the south, that was the reason for British troops being there in the first place? Secondly, if we are not delivering that policy or only partially doing so, is there nevertheless some justification for a continuing presence on its merits in Iraq over a period of time? Thirdly, regardless of those arguments, what are the wider political implications in regard to both the United States and western interests generally if we continue in Iraq for some time?
	Let me look at those three questions briefly. First, Basra is a lot better than Baghdad. The number of people being killed is far lower. The terrorism incidents have been much easier to control, but they are not in control. There is not a sectarian conflict between Shi'a and Sunni, but we should not get too overjoyed about that. The main reason is that the Sunni have effectively been expelled from the region and have become a small minority in that locality, so the conflict there is now Shi'a-Shi'a.
	However, the Government's writ does not run in Basra, and in that sense the British Government's presence there through their military forces has not delivered the kind of peace and stability that we hoped for over the past three or four years. I broadly accept the Government's argument that it is sensible over the next few months to withdraw those of our troops who are involved in patrolling in Basra. Three of the four provinces have already been handed over. It makes sense to work towards a handing over of the fourth province in months, not years. That would allow a substantial deployment.
	That brings me to my second question, which is highly relevant to what the Foreign Secretary said earlier: should we continue with some military presence even after most of our troops have been withdrawn and Basra province has been handed over to the Iraqi Government? In my judgment, the answer is yes because there are activities where we can continue to make a useful contribution to the objectives of the Iraqi Government, which we share, with regard to some possibility of stability in that region.
	What are those objectives? First, we have been heavily involved in training the 10th division of the Iraqi army, and that job is not yet complete, so a training function should continue even if we withdraw our troops from Basra province in relation to regular patrols. Secondly, when our troops move from Basra palace to Basra airport, the protection of the airport in ensuring that it can be used with free passage is an important contribution that British troops could continue to make in an effective and credible fashion. Thirdly, a major requirement will be to ensure the free movement of logistics from Kuwait to Baghdad and to central Iraq. Such convoy work is crucial. Indeed, we will do a huge disservice not only to the Iraqis but to our American allies if they have to redeploy some of their own scarce resources to cover that purely transport-related requirement from the southern part of the country to the north. That function can be carried out pretty effectively and with minimal casualties. Fourthly, there will be occasional operations where we could assist the Iraqi army where it does not have particular capabilities available to itself.
	On the basis of that argument, we would perhaps reduce our troop numbers from 5,500 to 1,000 or 1,500, ensuring that those who remained would not be as visible to the Iraqi publicand therefore could not be used as targets as has been the case in the recent pastbut would continue to be able to make a useful contribution to the ongoing battle to try to get some stability and security in the country.
	My third question concerns the wider political implications. We cannot get away from the fact that if the United Kingdom simply pulled out every single last soldier in the next few months, that would gravely damage the United States. I make that remark not out of love of the United States, although I happen to approve of it as a country, but because we have no national or international interest in giving comfort to al-Qaeda and terrorist elements. Leaving the United States completely exposed in Iraq, with even its closest ally having completely abandoned it, not even carrying out those responsibilities that it can credibly and effectively carry out, would be an over-reaction to the problem and should therefore not be supported. I would not make that argument were there not a job that could be credibly done, but in training and the other areas that I mentioned it is justified on its merits as well as in terms of the political strategy that points in the same direction.
	We often hear comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. In some ways, it is a false comparison: in fact, Iraq is worse than Vietnam. In Vietnam, there was already a war going on and the United States intervened to try to help one sidethe Vietnamese Government. In this case, the coalition started the invasion and the war that would not otherwise have occurred. There are other highly relevant differences. In Vietnam, there was one group of insurgentsthe Vietcongand an alternative Government: the North Vietnamese Government who were ready and willing to take over control. Neither of those factors applies in the case of Iraq. Iraq does not have one insurgencyit has multiple insurgences throughout the country. Some involve Shi'a versus Shi'a', some involve Kurds, some involve Sunni operatives, and some involve foreign jihadists such as al-Qaeda: all are battling with their own agenda and their own grasping for power. Moreover, no alternative Government are available to take over. As a result, we have a situation whereby 2 million Iraqis have fled Iraq since the end of the original war, and they are overwhelmingly Iraq's middle classthe people who are essential if there is to be any economic reconstruction of the country. That makes the situation even more dire than it would otherwise have been.
	What has happened is essentially this. Yes, it is true to say that under Saddam Hussein Iraq was a rogue state, but in the past four yearsI take no pleasure in saying thisit has moved from being a rogue state and is now a failed state. A failed state can have even more serious implications for its neighbours and for the region as a whole because of the vacuum that is createdwe all know what happens in vacuums when very nasty and vicious people are able to operate in ways that they would not otherwise have been able to. There are powerful reasons for ensuring that the United States is not humiliated. If Britain can continue to make some contribution to the wider international effort to achieve stability despite withdrawing its patrol forces and the bulk of its troops, that must be the right course of action.
	We are not going to see an end in Iraq rather like the end in Vietnam. There will not be any US helicopter taking off from the American embassy in Baghdad on the last day of this conflict. Even if the Americans withdraw their combat forces, they are probably in for a long period of years with a very substantial presence. It will be a long haul for the Americans and probably for the United Kingdom and a number of other countries. The good news is that it will not end like Vietnambut that is probably the bad news as well.

Khalid Mahmood: I should like to express my concerns about this issue. I have great regard for the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and, given his intellect and ability, for which I also have had a very high regard, I am somewhat amazed that he has again brought such a motion to this place. The issue of an inquiry is very important. When there was a vote on that here, I did not vote for it. The right hon. Gentleman says that the Government cited propositions concerning national security and so on, and he took that advice, as did his colleagues, and voted in a particular way. Until then, during my time on the Government Benches I had only once previously voted against my Government. I took that very seriously.
	In considering a motion such as this, it is important to determine whether it will really address and move forward the matter at hand, which is the number of lives that are being lostnot only among our armed forces and those of the Americans, but among Iraqis. Would such an inquiry deal with that? What would be its terms of reference and how would they be set? We have had four other inquiries. Every Member can pick holes in those inquiries because not one of us has been pleased by their outcomes. Would we get the result that we want in this case?

Dawn Butler: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a place for an inquiry but this is not the time for it?

Khalid Mahmood: I agree that there is a place for the inquiry that needs to consider the issues that must be dealt with.
	As Members have said, we face the question of how we deal with what is happening in the current arena of operations. How can we expose our forces to the detailed scrutiny of an inquiry? There are, therefore, inadequacies in such a proposal and we need to consider that seriously.
	The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks said that there had been four inquiries but that no inquiry was genuinely examining the issue. One inquiry is examining the matter, and I happen to be chairing it. It is a parliamentary inquiry into tackling terrorism and it has been proceeding for some time. Hon. Members have mentioned Sir Jeremy Greenstockhe will attend the inquiry to give evidence about tackling what is going on.
	The number of insurgents in Iraq who are taking action to inflame the situation further has been mentioned. We need somehow to defuse matters and allow the people of Iraq to return to some sort of normality. The actions that were taken, the way in which they were carried out, the consequences and the people who made the decisions need to be consideredonce the Iraqi people have been brought back to normality and enjoy the safety and security that we all take for granted. We must tackle that through active policy.
	We need to consider ways in which we can make a difference to the Iraqi people's lives and start to control the insurgencies and the factions. If we do not deal with such issues, an inquiry would not assist the people who are currently most at risk.

Tobias Ellwood: I am trying to understand the hon. Gentleman's argument. We went into Iraq on 20 March 2003 and, four years later, the country is on the brink of civil war. Does he honestly claim that a review would not let us understand exactly what went wrong and led the country to its current condition?

Khalid Mahmood: We took action after a vote in this place. We went to war and we are now facing the consequences of that. We must deal with those consequences. We could scrutinise that action, as the Opposition suggest, but I want to tackle what is happening on the ground. How do we engage with people and try to overcome a situation in which innocent Iraqis are killed daily? People lose their lives while they wait in queues for food and for jobs. We need to address that.
	Are we engaging in policy making with people from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference? We need to get them back on board. Someone mentioned the Baker-Hamilton inquiry in the United States, which has considered discussions with Syria and Iran. That is finethose two countries have a bearing on the matter. The populations of many Islamic countries have an effect on the melting pot. We need to control that melting pot and deal with the position whereby insurgents from the surrounding area come to Iraq. We must consider how to tackle that. Any inquiry should examine those important issues. Our inquiry is starting to do that and ascertain ways in which to deal with those problems. We are managing to do that on a cross-party basis.

Boris Johnson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that an inquiry could urgently consider our catastrophic failure before and after the war to protect Iraqi cultural heritage from systematic looting, which is devastating Iraq? If the Iraqis are to have any hope of rebuilding their country, that looting must be stopped. What have we in mind to prevent that? The Department for Culture, Media and Sport pledged 5 million, which has vanished, to stop the systematic looting. Would it not help the Iraqis to rebuild their future if they had some idea of what had allowed things to go so catastrophically wrong from the beginning?

Khalid Mahmood: The only way we can help the Iraqis at the moment is by bringing stability to the current position [Interruption.] I am happy to allow interventions.

Clare Short: The coalition is incapable of bringing stability to Iraq. That is the crisis and we need to examine how we got here in order to find another way forward. The instability is getting increasingly worse.

Khalid Mahmood: I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention; I am trying to make it clear that our inquiry is examining exactly that point. Military action has not worked and we need to consider engaging the OIC countries in the region. They can have a positive influence on all the factors that are needed to make a difference. We need to get them engaged in the process. Perhaps that will mean those countries contributing positively through allowing their armed forces to support the training of Iraqi forces, as opposed to American and British forces being targets for the insurgents. We need to examine methods of changing the arena in which our soldiers and the other coalition soldiers operate. We need to engage far more with the surrounding Muslim countries and emphasise that they have a stake in the future of Iraq, that of Afghanistan and, to an extent, that of Palestine. All those matters should be examined so that we start to deal with the position in Iraq.
	We need an inquiry that starts to formulate our foreign policy on engaging with those Muslim countries, move it forward and begin to deal with the situation. To me, that is most important. The Americans started the process through the Baker-Hamilton review. It was an important step forward for the Americans to take. We are doing similar work in Parliament, where our inquiry thankfully has cross-party support.

Angus MacNeil: If the hon. Gentleman believes that the Prime Minister was right to participate in the Baker-Hamilton inquiry, surely he would welcome the Prime Minister's participation in any inquiry into the genesis of the war that the House or the Privy Council conducted.

Khalid Mahmood: I have invited the Prime Minister to our inquiry[Hon. Members: Will he come?] I have been told that he will make himself available at some stage. I am waiting for him to respond formally. I have met him and invited him and made a formal request through his Parliamentary Private Secretary.

Angus MacNeil: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Prime Minister showed greater respect toand willingness to attendthe Baker-Hamilton inquiry than to his inquiry?

Khalid Mahmood: No. I am saying that I made a request to the Prime Minister and that it is currently being considered positively. We are waiting for a concrete date. People such as Major General Tim Cross have attended the inquiry and Sir Jeremy Greenstock will attend it. People such as Baroness Williams from the upper House serve on it. We are seriously considering how to tackle the situation in Iraq in future. My objection to the motion is that it does not do that.
	What are the terms of reference of the inquiry that the Opposition propose? Would it tackle what people want it to address? We all have matters that we would like an inquiry to consider. The Opposition have tabled a motion that states that they want a Privy Council inquiry. Who will sit down and determine the terms of reference? Will the whole of Parliament agree them? How will that be managed? The Opposition need to consider that serious issue if they want a positive inquiry.

Harry Cohen: I hear what my hon. Friend says about his inquiry. However, he mentioned the Baker-Hamilton inquiry. When does he think that the Prime Minister will tell Parliament exactly what he said to that inquiry?

Khalid Mahmood: That is a matter for him; I cannot speak for the Prime Minister. What I have done and will do is pursue him to come to my inquirythat is the best I can do and I will continue to do it.
	What we have to realise in this place is that whatever decisions have been taken and whatever has happened needs to be addressed. As hon. Members have said before, an inquiry will have to look at the whole build-up of arms in Iraq. We would have to go back to the Matrix Churchill affair and other issues that have come after it. We would need to see how Iraq was allowed to get itself into the position that it did, and we would need to examine the way in which all these things have happened. All those things will need to be in the terms of reference for an inquiry. I am sure that there will be a huge amount of debate and a huge inquiry in that respect.
	Most of us will agree with one or other aspect of an inquiry, but not all of it. That is what happens with public inquiries: we never always agree on all the final conclusions because they do not always suit our own particular ends or reflect what we wanted to see. The real issue for us today, though, is not that, but how we move forward. Until we start to look into how our foreign policy can address the issue of lives being lostday in, day outin Iraq, we will not achieve that.
	How do we actively involve and engage other Islamic countries in order to deliver a peaceful settlement for those people who moved away from the tyranny of Saddam Husseinsomeone who was prepared to take lives at any cost and did so, and sometimes with the help of the west? We need to move on and give confidence to Muslim opinion around the world that we are going to look into the issues that affect ordinary people who just want a decent quality of lifeeducation and health, for example.

David Anderson: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons his inquiry is facing problems is that the voice of ordinary people from Iraqtrade union leaders, for examplecannot be heard in this country because they are not allowed to speak? When they are out and about from their country, they face the risk of being assassinated, which has happened at least twice over the last six months.

Khalid Mahmood: My hon. Friend makes a valid point. He has made a huge contribution to the inquiry that is taking place. It is people like him who actually want a positive way forward, rather than navel gazing and continuous scratching of wounds in order to inflict damage. He realises that we need to move towards a decent future for the people of Iraq. That is the most important thing in any inquiry. What we should do in this place is to look into that very seriously and try to determine how it can happen.

Clare Short: I strongly believe that it is essential to establish an independent inquiry into the route to war in Iraq and its aftermath for a number of profoundly important reasons. The first is that the terrible suffering, loss of life and displacement of people in Iraq continues, as does the death and injury of our soldiers and American soldierswith no end in sight. There is no serious exit strategy. The Foreign Secretary talks as if all is going well and that if we can just wait a little bit longer, it will all be over and we could have an inquiry then. If only that were so. Whatever view one takes about the route to war, we would all be delighted if stability were to come soon and the killing and dying would end. No serious observer, however, holds that view.
	I recently met a former general in the UK Armyhe was a serving general when I was in government and I know him from that periodwho asked me whether I would like to know the Army view of what was happening in Iraq. He told me that the Army view was that there was absolutely no military purpose to our soldiers being in Iraq and that there was nothing that they could accomplish by being there. All they are doing, he told me, is trying not to get killed. The reason they cannot be withdrawn is that it would embarrass the US if the UK withdrew. That was a serious source of information and he was not saying that that was his personal view, but the Army view. That is outrageous. It means that our young people are killing and dying in order not to embarrass the US about its own flawed strategy. That is why we need an inquiry. It is an enormous problem and it is going to go on indefinitely.
	Even in the US, where the call for withdrawal gets ever louder and the Democrat party has tried to take up and echo the call in order to win elections, there is no honesty about what is being recommended. What the US really wants to do is remain in Iraq with permanent military bases in order to dominate the Gulf, withdraw to barracks and have a pro-American Government in Iraq. That is the policy. The problem is that that is unacceptable to the Iraqi people. Poll after poll has shown that they want a withdrawal as soon as possible. That meansthis is my serious and sincere view and the view of many othersthat the insurgency will continue. The trouble, bloodshed, anger and hatred in the middle east will get worse. More people will die and the Muslim community across the world, about which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Mahmood) has just spoken, will go on being angry and upset. More and more young people will become convinced that the only way to get justice in the middle east is to engage in violence. This whole situation is acting as a massive recruiting sergeant for terrorism, making the problem that it is meant to address ever worse and bringing our own country into terrible disrepute.
	Given the situation of our soldiers, it is right that they should be withdrawn. I disagree with the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) about that, but I agree that, irrespective of our views about how we got here, it is right to advise on the positive way forward. I believe that there is a positive way forward and that the Iraq Study Group produced a superb piece of work that points the way forward, but it is certainly not the policy being adopted by the US Administration or, to their shame, by the UK Government.
	The Iraq Study Group said that the US has to make it clear that it wants to withdraw as rapidly as possible and give up its aspiration to permanent bases in Iraq. It should then seek to negotiate a withdrawal as quickly and responsibly as possible. If the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr wants other countries, particularly Muslim countries, to come in and help the Iraqis, there has to be a handover to some sort of Government of national unityan end to the occupation, which would then trigger the willingness of the international community to come in and help the people of Iraq to stabilise their country.
	There is now interesting and important evidence that Moqtada al-Sadr is in talks with the organisers of the Sunni insurgency about coming together in a potential Government of national unity, calling for an end to the occupation and then uniting against the al-Qaeda elements who are inciting civil war and violence between Sunni and Shia. That is the way forward and the Iraq Study Group outlined it as a possible policy.
	The Iraq Study Group noted, of course, that if we want the help of Syria and Iran, things will have to be done. In the case of Syria, we will need to resolve the problem of the Golan heights. The report goes on to say that there has to be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine issue on the basis of the 1967 boundaries, the sharing of Jerusalem and a negotiated solution to the right of return. In other words, the Iraq Study Group, which comprised leading Republicans and Democrats who consulted all over the worldincluding our own Prime Ministersaid that the only way out of Iraq is a change of US policy in the middle east. That is the right answer.
	If the UK would say to the US, We support the Iraq Study Group and would work with you on that basis, but if not, we are out because we are doing no good in Iraq, our young people are dying in vain and we are inflaming the problem, we could all get back together and be proud of our Government instead of being ashamed of how they have proceeded in error and, I am afraid, deceit.
	I believe that dishonesty about why we went into Iraq helps to explain the chaos that we are now in. It never was about weapons of mass destruction: the Butler report summarised what the intelligence said and there was clearly no imminent threat. People believed that some scientists were doing work somewhere, but it was obvious that there was no imminent threat. Butler put that on the record. It was not about the nature of the Saddam Hussein regime either. The Prime Minister said in answer to a questionI think from the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), but I am not surethat if Saddam Hussein would co-operate with the weapons inspectors, he could remain. That was not the reason.
	The real reason was set out in The Project for the New American Century by leading neo-cons, who then went into Government. They thought that they would be welcomed when they went into Iraq because they believed their own propaganda. The purpose was, however, to remove American bases from Saudi Arabiathe land of the holy places, where they are absolutely not welcome and are seen as an outrage by the rest of the Muslim worldand place permanent bases in Iraq, from which to control the Persian gulf. That was the purposethat is the purposeand it is resulting in continuing insurgency, violence, divisions, death and destruction in the middle east.
	We need an inquiry because we have dishonesty and bad faith, and we have a strategy that will not work. Surely it is the duty of the House of Commons to consider how we got here and to look at the available alternatives and find a way forward.

Tobias Ellwood: The right hon. Lady speaks of the importance of an inquiry into the war. The invasion having taken place, however, does she also agree that there is a need to look into the aftermath and the peacekeeping that prevailed afterwards? Will she tell the House whether there was enough co-ordination between the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office in mounting that peacekeeping operation? The window of opportunity for peacekeeping to work is very small.

Clare Short: I shall come to that point in a few minutes.
	The second reason we need an inquiry is that the overwhelming majority of the people in the UK believe that they were lied to about the reasons for the war. Troops are still being deployed, and soldiers are still being injured, losing their lives and taking the lives of Iraqis for reasons that the majority in this country disbelieve. Our troops find that very distressing. A year or so ago, I was stopped in Whitehall by an officer in civilian clothes, who said that the worst thing that a soldier ever had to do was to talk to the parents of someone who had died under their command, and that when their country thinks that the war is dishonest and does not believe in it, that duty becomes unbearable. So part of our duty is to our troops. We need to get the truth out there and to treat them with respect. We should not ask them to serve, to risk their lives and to take the lives of others for reasons that their country does not believe in.
	The third reason we need an inquiry is to establish why there was such a failure to prepare for post-conflict Iraq. This is the issue that the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) raised a moment ago. I was involved in this, and my view is that the failure properly to prepare flowed from the deceit on the route to war. Preparations were made in the State Department, in the United Nations and in my old Department in co-ordination with other humanitarian agencies across the world for a post-conflict situation in which the occupying powers would honour their obligations under the Geneva convention. The occupying powers have a duty under that convention to keep order, but they do not have the right to reorganise the political institutions of a country. Under such arrangements, there was an expectation of internationalisation and international support.
	I went to a meeting of the World Bank shortly after the war. Of course, there were fantastic divisions there, but we worked to say that, whatever the divisions on the reasons for the war, if we could internationalise the reconstruction, please let us all come back in together to help Iraq to rebuild itself. What happened? With just months to go before the date chosen for the war, the President of the United States scrapped all the State Department's preparationswhich were massive and had been made in co-ordination with the rest of the worldand set up a unit in the Pentagon, which started making preparations from scratch. A British general, General Tim Cross, was put in as its deputy. He told me that they were moving in the furniture just a couple of months before the date chosen for the war.
	The answer is not that people failed to prepare. The preparations that were properly made according to international law for conditions that would have brought international co-operation were thrown away because of the reasons for the war. America wanted, as in Japan and South Korea, to be dominant in Iraq, to have bases and a pro-American Government there. It did not want internationalisation or a UN lead. That is all extremely important, and we need to learn those lessons if we are to begin to put things right.
	The fourth reason we need an inquiry is to examine the role of the Attorney-General. The full legal advice was never given to the Cabinet. I have never been a constitutionalist, but I am still utterly shocked by what took place. When I read the full legal advice, I still cannot believe that we were never given it, and that the legal advice that was given to the Cabinet and to Parliament was so different

Kevan Jones: You voted for it.

Clare Short: I voted on the basis of dishonesty, and of promises from the Prime Minister about the reconstruction and the road map, which were also untrue.

Kevan Jones: That makes it wrong now, does it?

Clare Short: I think that lots of people supported the Prime Minister but now feel that they were deceived by him. People all over the country have that view.
	My view on what happened over the legal advice is that the disgrace goes beyond the present holder of the office. The Attorney-General's role needs re-examination. On any vote in which the House of Commons is to be given the right to decide on war or peace, it will need its own legal advice. We cannot go on with the present arrangements, with the pretence of independence in authority but with political pressure that causes someone to modify their legal advice.
	The fifth major reason we need an inquiry is that the people of the UK have lost faith in their politicians and political institutions. There has always been a healthy disrespect for politicians in this country, but now it nears contempt. We need to be honest about what has happened, and to change our institutional arrangements as well as our policy in Iraq, in order to get back the faith and respect of the people of the UK.

Several hon. Members: rose

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I can see several Members hoping to catch my eye, but the amount of time left for this debate is limited. Perhaps hon. Members would bear that in mind when making their contributions.

Michael Meacher: I voted for the Iraq war, which I now bitterly regret. I therefore make these remarks much more in a spirit of contrition than of rebuke. I strongly believe that this issue will not go away. It continues to damage public opinion, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) has just so rightly said, and, like all painful traumas, it can be exorcised only by facing up to it, warts and all, and by an admission of mistakes, misjudgments and misrepresentations being made, with a full account being given of the changes to be implemented to prevent any such events from happening again.
	That is the only sure way in which to restore confidence and trust, which is what my party is now, rightly, urgently trying to do. Indeed, that has been the central refrain in the leadership and deputy leadership election contests in the party. The Chancellorthe Prime Minister in waitinghas made it clear that he wants a much more open and transparent form of Government to be a key means of winning back the votes that we have lost. I say to him that the Iraq war is unquestionably the place to begin. A wholly independent and thorough inquirynot only into the war's origins, which have already been explored to some degree, but into its handling and its aftermathwill do far more to restore confidence and trust than any other single issue.
	I take the Government's point that there have already been four separate inquiries, but none of them addresses what is clearly still needed. The Hutton inquiry was widely dismissed as a whitewash. The members of the Intelligence and Security Committee are appointed by the Prime Minister and the Committee reports to the Prime Minister. For all its seniority and expertise, which are undoubted, it cannot be regarded as wholly independent. The Foreign Affairs Committee is inhibited because it does not have access to the crucial intelligence data. The Butler review, to be fair, did produce a pretty damning report that drew attention to many high-level failures. However, it concluded that no one was really responsible, and drew no conclusions about how a debacle of this kind could be prevented in the future. None of the inquiries dealt with the handling or the aftermath of the war. What has happened since the war is, arguably, even more important.
	Having said that, I do not endorse either the proposal in the Opposition motion that a committee of Privy Councillors should undertake the inquiry. Apart from the fact that the matter was debated less than eight months ago, which makes it hard to believe that there is not a measure of political opportunism in raising it again so soon, I do not believe that it would provide the degree of independence that is vital for the purpose. The committee of inquiry, which I strongly endorse in principle, should be headed by a senior judge or similar person. However, unlike in the case of Lord Hutton, the chairman, members and terms of reference of the inquiry should all have to be approved by Parliament. The acceptance of its independence would therefore be assured from the outset. The appropriate Select Committee might be the Public Administration Committee, whose Chairman I am glad to see in the Chamber today.
	A great deal of information relevant to such an inquiry has already been documented. However, several key issues that led directly to the Iraqi disaster have simply been left hanging in the airthey have been debated endlessly, but no conclusions or determination about a different Government action later have been reached. No recommendation has been made for reform to prevent a repetition in future.

Angus MacNeil: Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that the motion before the House is a good starting point for the inquiry into Iraq or not?

Michael Meacher: I do believe that it is a good starting point. As I said, I am very much in favour of a committee of inquiry in principle. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I shall try to spell out how it should operate.
	The most important issue that has been left hanging in the air is the interface between the intelligence services and the political decision makers. I noted that the previous Secretary of State for Defence said only last month:
	I saw the intelligence from the first time I came into the office in May 1999week in, week outthat said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
	On the other hand, a few months before that, Carne Ross, a diplomat at Britain's UN mission in New York in the run-up to the invasion, revealed:
	There was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of chemical weapons, biological weapons or nuclear material.
	Those statements are totally inconsistent. Whatever the truth, and none of us can be sure either wayand that is my pointa much tighter degree of parliamentary oversight is clearly needed to ensure the integrity of the intelligence services' advice. The committee of inquiry ought to spell out in some detail how that might work.
	The Attorney-General's advice on the legality of the war was disclosed in full, well after the event, only because of the fear that it would be leaked bit by bit, damagingly, in the immediate run-up to the 2005 general election. That is not an acceptable precedent. We need a firm Government commitment that the Attorney-General's advice will always, in such circumstances, be published uncensored. Furthermore, reference should also be made to any significant dissenting voices, such as Elizabeth Wilmshurst's from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and to the grounds on which that dissent is argued.

Adam Holloway: I served as a soldier and a television correspondent during the war-fighting phases of both wars, and lost a number of friends and colleagues. Before the war in 2003, a friend who was well looped-in to intelligence about the war and what was going on told me that there was not a shred of evidence of useable weapons of mass destruction, and no connection whatever between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the inquiry should include an investigation of the activities of middle-ranking officers in the intelligence services and the Ministry of Defence?

Michael Meacher: The whole point of having a committee of inquiry is to examine how sensitive issues of intelligence data and of national securitya blanket term that can be easily extended for the Government's conveniencecan be made available in a way that allows the public and Parliament to take a serious and informed view. We cannot generalise about that; the matter needs to be considered with great care. That is exactly why a committee of inquiry ought to be asked to do that. If we are to have a parliamentary vote, which I strongly supportI have tabled a Bill to precisely that effectwe need to know the evidence by which an informed view can be taken.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I do not anticipate this point being contentious. Will my right hon. Friend extend his comments about the Attorney-General's advice to all advice given by the Attorney-General? In the case under discussion, two bits of advice were given. The first was wholly different from the second, and its existence was not even revealed to the Cabinet.

Michael Meacher: The second bit of advice is the crucial one. I understand my hon. and learned Friend's point about the distinction between the two. We learned in fullin more than 17 pagesthe Attorney General's detailed recommendations to the Prime Minister only because of the accident of an upcoming general election. That is totally unsuitable. In such circumstances, all the recommendations of the Attorney-General, especially those carrying the most authority, should be made available.
	The inquiry should examine the key question of the accountability of the Prime Minister to Parliament in such circumstances, and how it can be strengthened. I very much welcome the Chancellor's commitment to a parliamentary debate and vote before Britain is taken to war in future, which is absolutely right. The implication of the Iraq saga in that context is clear: the evidence to justify a decision to go to war must be made available to Parliament in detail, involving, where time allows, rapid and rigorous scrutiny by a Select Committee, which would then report to the House to inform the debate.
	None of the four pre-existing inquiries examined in much detail the aftermath of the war. Arguably, the lessons to be learned from that are even more important. The prime question is: what were the real objectives of the US-led invasion? To what extent did the UK agree with those objectives? How consistent were they with the creation of a democratic, secure, independent Iraq, which we would all wish to see?
	Many key issues deserve close attention from an inquiry, and have so far not been examined at all. Was there, initially, a reconstruction plan for the recovery of Iraqi industry and civil society? If so, what part did Britain play in it? Did we seek to avert the crass mistakes of the early Bremer administration, including the rapid disbanding of Iraqi military and security forces, the almost total neglect of essential, basic public servicesclean drinking water, electricity and hygienein favour of taking over the oilfields, and the 100 or so Bremer orders for the wholesale privatisation of Iraq? Did we have any role in any of those decisions? I would also expect a committee of inquiry to examine what part the UK authorities might have made played in the machinations, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) referred, behind the current Iraqi oil law, which looks set to deprive the Iraqi state, utterly debilitated as it is, of its one, enormous, indigenous asset.
	Of course, the most important question now, the Iraqi invasion and occupation being seen for the catastrophe that they are, concerns the exit strategy. Britain's own Army chiefs, public opinion in this countryconsistentlyand, indeed, the stated demands of the Iraqi Prime Minister are all calling for a speedy departure from Iraq. Of course a committee of inquiry will not settle a matter of that kind, but I think it could usefully give advice on some of the options and issues relating to it. I therefore believe that a further committee of inquiry, different from and more far-reaching than those that have preceded it, is still very much needed.
	As I have said, I do not support the Opposition motion because I think it is wrongly structured, and the right structure is central in this instance. However, I do believe that the establishment of such an inquiry in a different form, with the kind of remit that I have sketched out and subject to the full approval of the House, cannot be delayed indefinitely. I hope very much that the Government will return to this issue very soon.

John Maples: The right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) has posed some of the questions that an inquiry should look into. I want to return to the question of whether we should have an inquiry, rather than discussing the question of what it might do or what findings it might come up with.
	I want to deal with two specific issues. First, I want to nail the idea that the time is wrong for an inquiry. The time is certainly wrong for an inquiry about what we should be doing in Basra right now, or what General Petraeus should be doing in Baghdad and the Sunni areas right nowbut there is absolutely nothing wrong with an inquiry into how we became involved in the war. What were the relationships between the Prime Minister and the President? When were the decisions actually made? How was the intelligence got so wrong, and how was it so badly misinterpreted and/or mis-sold to Parliament? What part did we play in the mistakes made by the Bremer administration, and did we argue against them or were we fully on side?
	Those mistakes are in the past. I believe that we can inquire into them properly without in any way undermining the authority or effectiveness of what our troops and our coalition partners, particularly the United States, are trying to do in Iraq. I believe that it is a red herring for the Government to say that the timing is wrong. The timing is certainly wrong for a whole inquiry, but there would be nothing wrong with the timing of the first part of an inquiry, looking into how we reached this point and how such big strategic mistakes were made.
	The second lie that I want to nail, which is in the Government amendment, is that there have already been four inquiries. The right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton dealt with that to some extent, but I want to deal with it in a little more detail, because I was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee that reported on the issue.
	The Hutton inquiry was nothing to do with the war in Iraq. It was to do with the death of Dr. David Kelly. The terms were drawn up by the Government and were very tightly prescribed, although the Government were extremely generous with witnesses and papers. They did not show such generosity to the Foreign Affairs Committee. The Hutton inquiry obtained every witness that it wanted, but it was nothing to do with the intelligence or the decisions that put us in this situation in the first place.
	The Butler inquiry was useful. It examined the intelligence, and it was the only inquiry that found anything particularly new. It produced some very damaging evidence, mainly about the style of governmentwhich I think tells us something about the process by which the issues were consideredbut also about the fact that intelligence was at least mis-sold to Parliament, and did not quite justify what was in the September 2002 dossier.
	The third inquiry was conducted by the Intelligence and Security Committee. The ISC is not a Committee of Parliament. It is appointed under statute by the Prime Minister, it reports to the Prime Minister, and for obvious reasons all its evidence sessions are held in private. Its original role was overseeing the intelligence services. It was not designed to inquire into particular uses of intelligence or particular policy decisions made on the basis of that intelligence, with or without it. It was designed to have oversight of the security services, which were felt not to be accountable to Parliament in any way, because accountability other than through departmental Ministers was very difficult. The Government, however, have used it as something to hide behind.
	I was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee for, I think, seven years, until a few months ago. The Government would say, Oh, we'll give that intelligence to the Intelligence and Security Committee, as though that were an alternative to giving it to the Foreign Affairs Committee, when what was at stake was actually a foreign policy decision. I do not think that the Intelligence and Security Committee counts. The Committee that counts is the Foreign Affairs Committee, and our inquiry was obstructed by the Government.
	I cannot remember another instance since I have been in the House of a Select Committee's publishing a special report to the House saying that its inquiry was obstructed, and inviting the House to consider what it might do as a result. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) listed some of the witnesses and papers that we were refused. Our report stated:
	We are strongly of the view that we were entitled to a greater degree of co-operation from the Government on access to witnesses and to intelligence material.
	It was a unanimous report, produced by a Committee with a Labour majority. The only way in which the Committee could have sought to insist on the attendance of witnesses would have been to seek a resolution of the House, which, effectively, would require Government approval.
	I think that Parliament must decide whether it is serious about its Select Committees. We are pretty awful at holding the Government to account. So was the Labour party when we were in government, and so it will be again when we are back in government. I do not think that this is a party political issue. I think that the House must decide whether it is serious, and if it serious, whether Select Committees are the answer. We need a better mechanism than having to come back here and pass a resolution of the whole House to force the Government to comply with requirements with which they have already effectively agreed to comply.
	Our Committee asked for named civil servants and specific pieces of paper, and was denied them. We received a letter saying, The Foreign Secretary will answer for all these people. That is not what the rules say. When Robin Butler was the permanent head of the civil service he reinforced the Osmotherly rules, which stated that if a Committee asked for a named civil servant, that civil servant had a duty to attend. In exceptional circumstances, it might be necessary for civil servants' Ministers to answer for them. But we were not offered the Secretary of State for Defence, and we were not offered the Prime Minister himself. We were offered the Foreign Secretary to answer for all those civil servants, and I think that that was unsatisfactory.
	It is interesting to note that all those people attended the inquiries of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the Hutton inquiry. At the Hutton inquiry they gave evidence in public. All the papers that the Foreign Affairs Committee requestedwhich we were prepared to take on restricted terms, as we have with many other papers in the pastwere offered to those inquiries quite openly. I do not know whether the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) will wind up the debate. If not, I ask him to invite the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr. Ingram) to deal with this issue. The Government must stop saying that there has been an inquiry of the House just because the Foreign Affairs Committee conducted an inquiry. We were obstructed, and we published a report saying that we had been obstructed, to which all the Committee's Labour members subscribed.
	Our motion calls forand everyone talks aboutan external inquiry, as if we were incapable of performing this function for ourselves. I return to my point that the main function of the House of Commons, or at least of those Members who are not in the Government, is to hold the Government to account. One of our mechanisms for doing that is Select Committees. We should not abdicate the first difficult inquiry to a judge, as someone suggested. I happen to think that a High Court judge is the last person who should conduct such an inquiry. It would take five years, we would end up with a million volumes of evidence, andas happened with the Scott inquiryall who wished to do so would be able to pick out some bit of it that suited their argument. We need the House to be able to perform its functions. I think that if our Select Committee had been given the powers that it was supposed to have, we could have done it, although we might have needed some additional resources. The first step should be a Committee of the House; we should not be abdicating our responsibilities to other people.

Angus MacNeil: Is there not an overwhelming sense that the Government's resistance to an inquiry is conveying to the public and the wider world the idea that they really do have something, perhaps many things, to hide?

John Maples: I do believe that. Certainly we were not able to get to the bottom of the situation. The dossier of September 2002 was full of holes, and we picked up quite a lot of them. I think that the intelligence information was misrepresented, to put it at its most neutral. I suspect that, as someone suggested earlier, the decision was made six or nine months earlier, and the document was used merely to support a decision that had already been made.
	What lessons might we learn from an inquiry at least into how we got into this position? There are a series of questions to be asked about how we can get out of it and where we can go from here in the middle east, and I think that we will feel the repercussions for a long time. However, there is one serious lesson that I believe most of us have learnt. It is important because of the position in relation to Iran and the possible, indeed almost certain, development of nuclear weapons, which I believe will confront us with a much more serious strategic and security threat than we ever faced in Iraq, or in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda's bases there. It goes back to the Prime Minister's philosophy of intervention. I have always been dubious about the concept of humanitarian intervention. I do not believe that it exists in international law otherwise than through a resolution of the United Nations Security Council. In fact, in the mid-1990s, the Foreign Office published a quite lengthy refutation of the concept, saying that it did not exist.
	The Prime Minister elevated that to a doctrine, and took it rather further in his famous Chicago speech. We got away with it in Sierra Leone. It was a little place and we could deal with it with one naval warship. We achieved some good; I concede that. We were jolly lucky in Kosovo. We got away with that by the skin of Martti Ahtisaari's teeth. I do not know what he said to Milosevic to make him change his mind, but we were very lucky that we did not have to make a ground invasion of that country and make good our promise.
	I would thought that someone who really thought about such things would have said at that moment, Gosh. Hang on. That was almost the one too far, but no, we had to test that concept again. We have now realised that there is a limit to what we can achieve with that sort of intervention, and it is pretty close to home. If our security is not at stake, there has to be an overwhelming humanitarian casegenocide or a situation on the verge of genocideand it has to be clear that we can make a difference by intervening. If we intervene because we do not like the look of a Government, there is a long list. There must be 100 whom we do not like the look ofstarting, as someone said, with Zimbabwe perhaps. There are many others around the world.
	Therefore, the limits to the concept of intervention have been clearly brought home to us. We should reserve the huge punch that we have with our armed forces for situations where it is vital, and where we can succeed.
	The main point that I want to come back to is that the inquiry should start in this House. It has Select Committees to do these things, and those Select Committees can do themif they are given the powers, and if the Government do not obstruct them.

Tony Wright: I want to follow the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) by saying something about Parliament, because he is on to something extremely important, and we should not give away to other people Parliament's ability to do things that Parliament should do. First, however, I shall return to a remark by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who said that what had happened in Iraq was, in his words, predicted and predictable. I could not help but think, when I listened to him, that that was not something that the Conservative partythe official Oppositionknew at the time. If so, the massed ranks of Her Majesty's Opposition would not have been urging action on the Government. Indeed, the then leader of the party was irritated whenever Labour Members raised questions about the basis on which the strategy was being conducted. Therefore, a certain amount of humility and contrition is required on the Conservative Benches. As it happened, Conservative Members had it within their power to prevent the action from taking place. It has to be said that the questions were being asked entirely from the Labour Benches, and the people who dissentedalthough there were some honourable exceptionswere overwhelmingly to be found on the Labour Benches.
	The reason the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who was one of those exceptions, was right to use the words predicted and predictable is that many of us, even when we wanted toI was certainly in that categorycould not find a way to make the story and the narrative that were being given to us about the basis for taking military action stack up. I wanted it to stack up. I have felt guilty since about not supporting action to take the world's worst tyrant out of the picture, but the fact is that I could not find a way of telling the story that made it add up.
	I could not see a way of telling the story that altered the fact that Iraq was a regime contained. It was extremely vile, but it was not threatening us or the security of the world. We knew that it was not connected to al-Qaeda. In fact we knew that it was important in suppressing al-Qaeda. We thought that there was an agenda on the American right that was pushing military action as part of a wider plan for the middle east and the world, but we could not understand why we wanted to attach ourselves to it. Probably most importantly of all, we also thought that the action was likely to increase terrorism rather than to diminish it. The huge tragedy is that in the wake of 9/11 the world, with very few exceptions, turned in solidarity to the United States, yet within two years that solidarity was blown away by what happened next.
	That is why the situation was predicted and predictable. It was pretty obvious, if we explored the story that was being given, that that was a likely consequence. Indeed, we discovered afterwards that the Intelligence and Security Committee had said in terms that terrorism was likely to be increased by the action that was taken.

Tobias Ellwood: I think that the hon. Gentleman is being slightly disingenuous. I did not support the war itself, but the hostilities finished about May 2003. A vacuum was caused, and we did not fill that vacuum with a proper Iraqi structure. That is why we are heading towards a civil war. Had that planning taken place, things would have been different. That has nothing to do with the war itself. The hon. Gentleman is blurring the two issuessomething that has happened again and again.

Tony Wright: I was not blurring the two issues. I was talking precisely about the genesis of the war, which would be a major focus of any inquiry. A further focus would, of course, be the failure to plan for what happened afterwards, but the genesis of the war is at the heart of what we are talking about. I took that to be the burden of the point that was made by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea. Therefore, we have to revisit those events and to see why, if they were so predicted and predictable, they nevertheless happened.
	By the way, I never thought that there was any intentional deceit going on. Certainly there was not any on the part of the Prime Ministerbut I thought that he probably believed too much in the story that he was telling, which made him inattentive, as we now know, to the fact that, as Lord Butler has told us, the intelligence was being used to carry more than it could bear. Therefore, it is crucial that we go back and find out exactly what happened in terms of the story that was developed.
	Without making, I hope, a trivial party point, I suggest that there is one inquiry that the Opposition could have at once, which is to examine why they did not know and understand better the flaws in the story that we were given at the time. That is one inquiry that they have it in their control to put in hand now, because that factor was of extreme importance, as it turned out.
	I want to pick up the point that the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon made. Where does Parliament

Gerald Howarth: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, but speaking for myself, I never thought that I would be led astray by my own Prime Minister in respect of security matters. It always seemed to me unnecessary for the House to be kept informed of the minutiae of security matters, as long as the Prime Minister knew what was going on. The fact is that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) said earlier, the intelligence services were effectively suborned. That has not happened in recent history, and it is, in part, what has led us to the desperate situation that we now face.

Tony Wright: I realise that that is the line that is giventhat we were all woefully misled by the Prime Ministerbut large numbers of Members of the House were not woefully misled by the Prime Minister. They interrogated the evidence, made political judgments and came to rather shrewd conclusions. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea has just told us that that is entirely what should have happened, so it cannot be simply that the Opposition were misled by what the Prime Minister said. The story is deeper, richer and more troubling than that.
	I now want to talk about Parliament, because that element is the bit of the Opposition motion's call for an inquiry that I dissent from. The Opposition are mistaken to call for a committee of Privy Councillors. Again, there is a story behind what happened. A couple of years ago the Public Administration Committee, which I chair, conducted an inquiry into inquiries; it was the first time that that had been done. We looked into the whole history of inquirieswho called them, how they were organised, and the whole shooting match. At the time the Government were introducing their own Billthe Inquiries Billto regularise how a range of them were conducted. What became clear as a result of our inquiry was that Parliament had, through a complex process, effectively abandoned the field.
	In the 19th century the parliamentary inquiry was the dominant form of inquiry. Reference has been made to the first world war and the Dardanelles campaign, but we could go all the way back to the Crimean war. The House established a Committee of inquiry to report on the condition of the Army before Sebastopol. Gladstone spoke against it, and it produced the downfall of the Aberdeen Government. However, as the party system solidified at the beginning of the 20th century, it became difficult for Parliament to undertake dispassionate cross-party inquiries. The example that is always cited is the Committee on the Marconi scandal. That parliamentary inquiry divided on party lines, and has been described as the first great whitewash. As a consequence, the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 was introduced, which effectively took inquiries outside this House, retaining only the requirement for a resolution of this House to set up such an inquiry. The establishment of an inquiry was still anchored in a parliamentary resolution, although the inquiry itself was taken outside the House. That in turn was also criticised. The Salmon commission looked into the matter, and now we have this Government's Inquiries Act 2005.
	The overall consequence has been that Parliament has been taken out of the picture. In our report of a couple of years ago, my Committee argued that we should not abandon that territory. There is a category of inquiry on issues of great political importance that only parliamentary politics can get its teeth into. I say, with great respect, that such matters are not for judges. We heard great evidence from the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, who emphatically said that there is a category of politically contentious inquiries in which judges should not be involved.
	Therefore, there is a need for a specific kind of inquiry on matters that are not appropriate for the judge route or other routesbut Parliament has abandoned conducting such inquiries and is unable to undertake them through its existing Select Committee system. I am referring to forensic, fact-finding inquiries, such as the example we heard about in respect of the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is why I have a reservation about the form of inquiry proposed in the Opposition motion. We asked Lord Butler about this matter, and he agreed that it would have been better if his inquiry had been a parliamentary inquiry. He also pointed out that four of the five members of his team were parliamentarians, so it would have been quite easy to have made it a parliamentary inquiry. For the category of inquiries I am referring to, it is constitutionally important that Parliament as an institution can say, This subject is of such great public importance that Parliament must set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry, beyond its Select Committee system. That would involve bringing in outsiders, as required. However, Parliament must be able to do that.

Angus MacNeil: Perhaps some inquiries would best be conducted by Scotland Yard. However, is the hon. Gentleman saying that if the words Privy Counsellors were removed from the Opposition motion and replaced by a loose form of words such as MPs chosen at random, he would support it?

Tony Wright: Let me tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what I think, as this is important. This is what my Committee reported to Parliament two and a half years ago about the similarities and differences between the Privy Councillor form of inquiry and a joint committee of inquiry of this House:
	The similarity in form of the Franks and Butler Committees with that of a Joint Committee is striking but, as Committees of Privy Counsellors, their nature is fundamentally different and, from a constitutional point of view, less satisfactory. We recommend that in future inquiries into the conduct and actions of government should exercise their authority through the legitimacy of Parliament in the form of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry composed of parliamentarians and others, rather than by the exercise of the prerogative power of the Executive.
	That highlights the essential point. It is a truism that Oppositions call for inquiries and Governments resist them, unless they find it convenient to have oneand then, as Lord Heseltine has told us, they decide what they would like their conclusion to be and choose a chairman to make sure that they get it. That is what happens, but it is unsatisfactory if we believe that Parliament really is, as used to be said, the grand inquest of the nation. If it is that, it must have the mechanism to set up inquiries rooted in this place even when the Government of the day do not want them, and particularly where no other mechanism is suitable for the job in hand.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I have been listening with great respect to my hon. Friend's comments, and I would usually leap with enormous enthusiasm on anything that would enhance the power of Parliament, and in particular of Select Committees. However, I shall support the motion, because is there not a problem in this instance, in that we in Parliament were complicit in the decision to go to war? My hon. Friend is right to say that some Members did not sift the evidence with as much care as they should have done. He was not guilty of that, and I am proud to say that I too did not vote for the war, because I did not believe what we were being told. However, Parliament was complicit in the processwe voted for this. In those circumstances, is it not essential that an inquiry be taken outside Parliament, and away from those who were involved?

Tony Wright: I draw the opposite conclusion. If we want to restore the reputation of this House, we must be able to show that we can do the kind of things that the public want us to do. They want to know where this war came from, in the largest possible sense. They want Members of Parliament, irrespective of party, to make sure that that job is done. That is what I strongly believe.

Angus MacNeil: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Tony Wright: I wish to conclude, if I may.
	I am weary of all the time being on the side of those who demand inquiries because that is part of the rhetoric of the job that we do, while not being serious about making sure that we put in place the mechanisms to give us the inquiries that we need. I want that to be the lesson that comes out of this process. I am sure that we will have an inquiry one day, and I hope that the Government will propose the kind of inquiry that I would like.

Adam Price: I warmly congratulate those on the official Opposition Front Bench for bringing back to the table the call for a comprehensive inquiry into the Iraq war, which was first tabled last autumn.
	The motion is not about apportioning blame. It is about the House taking responsibility. To echo the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), it is about this House recognising our collective responsibility notwithstanding that a minority of us voted against the motion before the House four years agoand signalling our collective determination to put right the colossal wrong that was inflicted on the people of Iraq and this country by that vote. We cannot bring back the dead, but we can honour their memory in our sincere commitment to learn the painful lessons of these last four years. Only then can we rebuild a relationship of trust between the Government and the governed in this country, and between this country and the countries of the rest of the world.
	As we have heard in this debate, the cost of this war has been immense in human terms: 150 British servicemen and women, more than 3,500 Americans and more than half a million Iraqi civilians. Two million people have left Iraq and a further 2 million have been displaced internally. Millions more, especially the young, as we heard from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), are scarred by hate, hostility and a passive acceptance of, or even positive support for, continued violence. The war has galvanised Islamic extremism, destroyed Iraq's basic infrastructure, turned it into a fertile ground for recruiting terrorists, exacerbated the divisions within Iraq and fomented a civil war. It has diverted our attention from the very real threat of al-Qaeda, weakened our standing in the world, and undermined the United Nations and the rule of international law. All in all, it has made the world a far less safe and hospitable place for decades to come. This is the worst foreign policy disaster in more than half a century, and it would be a dereliction of our duty in this place were we not to hold an inquiry into this terrible debacle.
	As has already been said, the damage done is not just the denting of public confidence in this Government; confidence in democracy itself, in any Government of any hue who will be faced in future with matters of peace and war, has been undermined. Indeed, on looking at the facts, the picture of manipulation and distortion and the absence of accountability in any real or meaningful sense is troubling to all of usof any party and of nonewho are concerned for the integrity of our democratic system. The Prime Minister developed more than ever before not a collegiate but a presidential style of government, with no effective input from the Cabinet or from Parliament because it and we were not in full possession of the facts.
	As it happens, I do not doubt that the Prime Minister genuinely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and the same is probably true of the Bush Administration. Why else were hundreds of millions of dollars budgeted for the destruction of weapons of mass destruction that never actually materialised? The question is: what was the basis for the Prime Minister's belief? In a sense, it was belief itselffaith itself. As a former director of strategic proliferation in the US State Department, Greg Thielmann, said in July 2003:
	this administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude: we know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers.
	The Prime Minister subtly shifted his position from saying that Iraq had the potential to develop WMDin the same way that Iran has nowto saying that it actually possessed them, when there was no basis for that shift in the information emanating from the intelligence services. What was a potential became an article of faith, and then became an established fact. He told journalists that Iraq had
	actually acquired weapons of mass destruction
	and that the threat was
	not in any doubt at all.
	He said that Iraq was in possession of
	major amounts of chemical and biological weapons,
	yet there was no concrete evidence for any of this. It was assertion, which we now know to be entirely false. The intelligence at the time in both the United Kingdom and the United States was heavily qualified and non-committal, but the facts were fixed around the policy.
	As far as the dodgy dossier is concerned, the serious charge levelled by the Butler report is not that the Government fabricated intelligence, but that they distorted it by leaving out the qualifications and the caveats. As Hans Blix so eloquently put it, the Government put exclamation marks where there should have been question marks, in effect misleading the Cabinet, Parliament, the Labour party, the public and the international community. It is our duty now in this place to find out how and why that course of action was pursued.
	The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood was absolutely right in saying that the poor judgment and lack of candour that characterised the run-up to the war have also featured heavily in its disastrous aftermath. As we have heard, the most fateful decision of all was coalition provisional authority order No. 2, on the dissolution of the Iraqi army and the police force. Simply sacking close to three quarters of a million peoplemany of them armed, as we now knowand turning them into a vast army of the unemployed, alienated, humiliated and angry, was a monumental misjudgment from which Iraq has still not recovered.
	The policy of privatising the state-owned enterprises had the same effect on the middle classes in Iraq, many of whom were employed by those companies. Interestingly enough, the only pre-invasion, Saddam era economic legislation that remained in place was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining. It would be interesting to hear what the Government's view on that was at the time. The inevitable result of the wave of economic insecurity that engulfed Iraq was insurgency, civil war and political instability.

Richard Younger-Ross: The reasons we went to war, which the hon. Gentleman referred to in his opening comments, could perhaps be dealt with by a review at a later date, but the points that he is making now are the very reason we need an inquiry now. Reconstruction is still going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we need to learn those lessons so that we can make progress and make sure that we get Iraq and Afghanistan right, along with any other areas in which we are involved in a similar way.

Adam Price: The hon. Gentleman makes his point very cogently. Iraq cannot wait for us to learn these lessons; we need to learn them now in order to inform current policy making, so that we do not make these mistakes in future.

Eric Joyce: I have been listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman. If there were a contemporaneous inquiry, does he not think that, if he were a soldier or officer posted in Iraq who had also been there on previous tours, his mind might be on that inquiry, rather than on his current operations? Would such an inquiry therefore not be a profoundly bad idea?

Adam Price: I can only make my decision based on what serving officers have told me, and they have said that they want us to fulfil our democratic duty and to represent them by examining those difficult questions. Indeed, they have told other Members whom we have heard from this evening the same.
	We need to know what the Government's role was in the mistakes that were made in the aftermath. The Prime Minister said that the invasion had been subject to the
	most careful planning and consideration.
	That clearly cannot be the casewe only have to look at the facts before our very eyes.
	He accepted the Bush Administration's assurance that it was
	unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between different religious and ethic groups,
	even though he had been advised by Britain's Iraq experts at a Downing street seminar that that could very well be an outcome of the policy. Of course, we have now learned that the CIA advised the Bush Administration, in a paper presented to the President, of the very same conclusion.

Clare Short: That was the point that I wanted to put to the hon. Gentleman. The State Department's preparation said that there was a real danger of chaos and internecine civil war, and that the answer was to take off only the very top of the Ba'athist regime and leave everyone else in place, because any professional in the country had to be a member of the party. That was the State Department's advice.

Adam Price: Yes, and of course, we are still struggling to get the al-Maliki Government to reverse the de-Ba'athification policy.
	Throughout the occupation and the aftermath of the war, the Government, conscious of the pressures of negative public opinion, have consistently underestimated the strength of the insurgency, consistently overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's Government and security forces, and failed to provide Parliament with an accurate assessment of the conditions on the ground in Iraq. Given the catastrophic failure at the heart of the Government, to which the enduring crisis in Iraq surely testifies, the lack of a proper inquiry to date is an abdication of our responsibility in this House, which we must put right tonight.
	Let us turn briefly to the contrary arguments. The argument about the four inquiries, which the Government present in their amendment, has been categorically demolished by several hon. Members. The shortcomings of the Select Committee process, which I would like to amend, are there for all to see from the comments that we have heard. As far as the Hutton and Butler inquiries are concerned, the terms of reference were deliberatelyin my viewdrawn too narrowly in order to preclude them from examining the wider issues with which we have concerned ourselves in this debate.
	The second argument, which says that the time is not right, flies in the face of constitutional precedent. I do not refer just to Norway and to the Dardanelles; there is a much more pertinent precedent. When the British Army was last bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq, then known as Mesopotamia, in the summer of 1916, the officialConservativeOpposition tabled a motion calling for a commission of inquiry into the Mesopotamia campaign, its inception and its conduct.
	The motion was not moved, because they did not have to move it. The Government of the day accepted the principle, conceded the point and established the Mesopotamia commission in August 1916, while British troopsto answer the point made by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies)were still in Basra. Indeed, while the commission was still investigating, there was a further push to central Iraq, to Baghdad. There was a commission of inquiry during a campaign that had cost the lives of 90,000 British troops.
	If it was possible for the Government of the day to hold such an inquiry then, while the liberty of this country was at stake, why is it not possible now? One of the main charges that the commission laid at the Government in the Mesopotamia inquiry was that they were guilty of what it called in an elegant phrase, the misuse of reticence, or the culling of inconvenient facts to protect the official linea practice that could as happily describe the Government's Iraq policy today as it could the then Government's policy 90 years ago.
	This House cannot remain reticent; we must speak out. In the words of the special prosecutor in the case of the White House aide, Lewis Libby, who was sentenced this week:
	We need to make the statement that the truth matters ever so much.
	It matters even more in this little room, to use Churchill's phrase, because of what it signifies to so many millions of people. I hope that despite the difficulties that I understand right hon. and hon. Government Members will face, it will be possible for the House tonight to unite not behind party but behind the most basic principle that in this place, above all others, we must accept our responsibility if we are not to repeat our mistakes.

Several hon. Members: rose

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. May I remind hon. Members that winding-up speeches start at 7.30 pm? I hope to call someone else, but I hope that Members will be mindful of that.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall, indeed, be brief.
	Of course, there must be and there will be an inquiry. I favour the type of inquiry that the motion sets out, and I have already indicated why I do so in an intervention. The Government's reasons for opposing the motion are untenable. To deal with them individually and briefly, of course we must not damage or undermine the integrity of the elected Government of Iraq; but far more important than that, we must not damage or undermine the integrity of the elected Government of the United Kingdom. One great success of Iraq was the millions who voted in their election: one great failure of the United Kingdom is the millions who did not vote in ours. One reason they were alienated from the political process was undoubtedly Iraq.
	It is myopic and false to suggest that there have been a total of four separate inquiries, and I shall not deal with that suggestion, because it has been rehearsed on many occasions. However, it is far more myopic and false to suggest that there have been four inquiries that have exonerated the Government, because they manifestly have not. The Butler inquiry in particular did not exonerate the Government. At paragraph 472, it said:
	We have also recorded our surprise that policy-makers and the intelligence community did not, as the generally negative results of UNMOVIC inspections became increasingly apparent, re-evaluate in early-2003 the quality of the intelligence.
	Of course, Lord Butler was speaking mandarin, a language in which he is fluent. In mandarin, surprised does not mean Good Lord! Is that the time? It means to be confronted with facts and assertions that are utterly incomprehensible. The question that he asked in vacuo was, Why didn't policy makers re-evaluate what they had sought in early 2002 when taking us to war in 2003? He could not ask the question because of the terms of reference within which he was enchained.
	One particular reason the issues were not revisited was that the decision to invade had already been takenirrespective of the intelligence that was subsequently obtained. That, above all, is one matter than an inquiry must consider. The decision is to be foundmentioned not in the debate, but many times in Americain the so-called Downing street memo or minute, which  The Sunday Times published in 2005, in an uncharacteristic service to this debate. It relates to a Downing street minute in July 2002, which records the report of Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or C, as he was known. It reported that he had come from Washington, where, he said:
	There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
	Not one word of that reached this House in the subsequent debates. Not once were we told that it was the belief of the SIS and its head that America had already made up its mind, whatever the intelligence. None of it came here. That is the first matter that must be investigated.
	The second matter, which has been touched upon on numerous occasions, is the Attorney-General's legal advice. On 7 March 2003 he produced for the Prime Minister an opinion that was hedged with doubt. He said that a reasonable case can be made; but two paragraphs later he said that a contrary case may easily and reasonably be made. Not a word of that reached the Cabinet or this House. Ten days later, a wholly contrary and completely un-hedged and unqualified opinion on the legality of war was given to the Cabinet. Not one word of explanation has been heard by this House for that sudden change to what has manifestly been perceived to be an illegal conflict.
	Those matters must be resolved, and they are so important that party politics must be put on one side in order to obtain the inquiry. A fellow Back Bencher asked me a little while ago when we were discussing the debate, Are you going to vote with the Tories? The answer is no. I am not going to vote with the Tories: I am going to vote for an inquiry. I shall do so at every conceivable available opportunity, because it is in the interests of the country, of Parliament, and coincidentally, of my own party under its new leadership that we resolve this matter now.

Gerald Howarth: Earlier, Mr. Deputy Speaker suggested that there had been a late surge of interest in the debate. That has been fully confirmed by the quality of the speeches we have heard, not least that of the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). As is customary with him, he put the interests of the country and Parliament before his own narrow party interest[ Laughter.]

Robert Marshall-Andrews: That was helpful. Thank you very much.

Gerald Howarth: I always like to try to help the hon. and learned Gentleman.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) made a compelling case in principle for an inquiry of the type he set out, and the debate has illustrated that his view is widely supported on both sides of the House. It is thus extremely disappointing that despite the fact that the Foreign Secretary has had seven months to consider the arguments my right hon. Friend made previously, she has not been persuaded of themunlike her right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Education and Skills and for Defence, both of whom have accepted the case for an inquiry, although they have not put a timetable on it. The Foreign Secretary seems to be out of step with many members of the current Cabinet andwho knows?possibly the next one, too.
	The Foreign Secretary not only said that her position was unchanged but made the astonishing remark that accountability was now self-indulgent introspection. It is astonishing that she should have equated accountability in the House with narrow introspection. We make no apologies for holding this debate. She described it as opportunistic. If it is opportunistic to give right hon. and hon. Members an opportunity to express their views on a matter of major national importance, we are proud to have facilitated it and proud to have done so again today.
	Furthermore, in another astonishing contribution, the Foreign Secretary responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) by making it clear that she saw no merit in looking back to examine the lead-up to the war in Iraq. In essence, she argued that experience can inform neither the present nor the future. That is a serious indictment of her policy, and if it is the Government's policy it is a serious indictment of their strategy, too. If we cannot learn from our experience, we are not doing a service as Members. It is significant that some Members who supported the war in the past have said that we owe it to the public to revisit the matterthe right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) is one such Member.
	I offer three reasons an independent Franks-type inquiry would benefit all of us, Ministers included. First, there is now almost universal recognition that there was a woeful lack of debate in the UK about post-conflict reconstruction. Paradoxically, in Washington in the six months leading up to the war there was talk of little else, but in this countrysilence. The Government would not make time for a debate because they did not want to give their Back Benchers the impression that they had already signalled to the US Government a tacit commitment to provide British military support.
	We had to initiate the debate and we did so on 30 January 2003, when my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) said:
	If the wider war on terrorism is to succeed, it is crucial that we do not forfeit vital international support by pursuing a war against Saddam Hussein without a comprehensive humanitarian strategy for helping the innocent Iraqi people.
	During that debate, not only my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden but many other hon. Friends tried to get an answer from the then Secretary of State for International Development about what precisely the British Government had it in mind to do post-conflict. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short)I am pleased that she is in the Chamber todaygave a lot of background about the circumstances and the lead-up, about Saddam Hussein and so on. However, she gave the House very little information about exactly what the Government's strategyindeed, the allies' strategywas for post-conflict reconstruction. All she said was:
	I have had talks with the various UN humanitarian organisations and the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which leads co-ordination of the UN effort. I think that the preparations are as good as they can be.[ Official Report, 30 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 1043-54.]
	That was virtually all the information given to the House.
	The result was that Parliament had almost no opportunity to test the Government's post-conflict reconstruction policieshow the country was to be run after the decapitation of the Saddam regime, let alone the rebuilding of Iraq's crumbling infrastructure. It was interesting that Washington had a clear plan, although as my hon. Friends have suggested, it did not last beyond the first round of gunfire. None the less, there was a plan, which was to leave in place those who were running the infrastructure in Iraq, but that was not consistent with removing the Ba'athists from the regime. Save for the opportunities afforded by the Opposition, the House could not debate those matters and we are pleased to offer Members a further opportunity to discuss them today.
	As General Sir Mike Jackson, until last year head of the British Army, made clear in the Dimbleby lecture last December, the solution in Iraq does not lie simply with the military. He said:
	I want to say something about across-government capabilities. Particularly in post-conflict situations, it is not just a matter for the military. The political and military approaches must be as one. Complex and difficult conditions follow war, ethnic conflict, and failed states. My analogy here is the strands of a rope. Individual strands are just that, they have this or that breaking strength. But when you weave them together you actually produce something that is stronger than the sum of its parts. And these strands for me are obviously security, the political dimension, humanitarian, and economicat least those four. And you don't have long to get going. There is a sense that you must make a difference within a hundred days, or you will have a lost opportunity. It gives me no pleasure to say that I fear this was not the case where Iraq was concerned.
	Our armed forces are simply brilliant at getting things done quickly. I give the House an example. When the Select Committee visited Iraq less than three months after the war ended, we were given a briefing by a young captain from the Royal Monmouthshire Militia Royal Engineers and a senior warrant officer from the Army Air Corps. Within 13 weeks of the end of the war, they had already undertaken the refurbishment of 13 schools in Basraa phenomenal achievement. We went to see DFID. What was it doing? It was still designing the forms. There was a grotesque lack of co-ordination between Departments, which is a real indictment. The military had done their bit; they had fulfilled their obligations, but unfortunately the civil side had not. There was no effective follow-up because there was no plan.
	General Jackson argued that there should have been much greater co-ordination between Departmentsa point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood). The current Secretary of State for International Development seems to be moving in that direction, too. Recently, he said:
	Using 'hard power' alone will not be enough to tackle terrorist groups.
	The second purpose of an inquiry would be to consider how we should adjust our whole military posture to the new type of military operations we face, including at the tactical level: whether our soldiers, sailors and airmen are getting the right training package for that type of warfare; whether, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, we have the right equipment for the task; whether we have the correct balance of forces, and what needs to be done so that we do not become disproportionately reliant on urgent operational requirementsa kind of panic-buying formulato make up the shortfall in equipment.
	I do not believe that such an investigation would disrupt ongoing operations, still less that the armed forces would resent it. Between us, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks and I represent a large slug of the British Army and we have not heard it said anywhere that such an inquiry would damage the morale of those on the ground. They have acquitted themselves with enormous courage and dignity in a military operation that they know does not command universal approval at home. I believe that they would welcome any measure that would help to build public confidence that lessons have been learned.
	Significantly, when the Foreign Secretary was asked by the hon. and learned Member for Medway whether the military had given an indication that they would support an inquiry, she could not answer that question. Indeed, the Minister of State responsible for the armed forces could not give her any comfort, either. They both know that her point was bogus and invalid.
	The third reason we need an inquiry has been set out by many right hon. and hon. Members: the four inquiries on which the Government rely as evidence that the House has had the opportunity to consider all the issues that have been debated today did not consider the issues in the round or in the way in which many right hon. and hon. Members would like. Simply speaking, those inquiries did not deal with the issues, or dealt with them partially and indifferently. We have heard at length how the Select Committee was treated contemptuously by the Government.
	I make no apologies for mentioning in this debate and in this week, which commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Falklands conflict, the issue of combat stress among our brave service personnel. We are embarked on two war-fighting operations that involve high-intensity combat, yet unlike the second world war, when civilians in London and Coventry were being bombed out of their homes, or the Falklands campaign, when the entire nation was engaged and glued to the evening news to find the latest reports from the front, today the rest of us are enjoying the cricketI do not know the result of the test match[Hon. Members: We won.] We won, so the rest of us are enjoying the cricket, the motor racing and other relatively peaceful summer pursuits. This is a serious issue, and I do not want to demean it, but I want to make the point that the rest of the nation is enjoying the summer season, while our soldiers, sailors and airmen are engaged in bloody battles in the intense heat of the middle east. That experience will have an enduring effect on some of them.
	I met such personnel yesterday at a Falklands drumhead service in Aldershot military cemetery in my constituency, and they are still suffering after the Falklands campaign. It is said that more men have died by their own hands since 1982 than the 255 who gave their lives 6,000 miles away. I am aware of the Ministry of Defence's announcement today, and I welcome it, but it is insufficient to meet the challenge that we face. An inquiry of the kind that my right hon. and hon. Friends have proposed tonight would provide an opportunity to examine why we are doing so comparatively little to help to mend those with broken minds.
	There is a precedent. In the Dardanelles campaign, it was said that the remit of the commissioners in that inquiry in 1916 included the conduct of the war,
	the supply of equipment to the troops, the provision for the sick and wounded and the responsibility of the Government whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of the forces employed in the theatre of war.[ Official Report, 27 July 1916; Vol. 84, c. 1896-97.]
	I rest my casethere is a precedent as to why an inquiry should consider such matters, too.
	We cannot postpone an inquiry until a time that is politically convenient for the Government. We need to make a decision in principle now, and to assemble a wise and experienced panel of eminent persons who can consider the lead-up to the war, the use and interpretation of intelligence, the war itself and the post-conflict reconstruction. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) said, we can do that perfectly well without inflicting any problems on those engaged in war-fighting operations.
	The reason for the relative urgency is that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks said, while the events are fresh in people's minds and the e-mails have not been destroyed, we need to learn whatever lessons we can from the background to operations in Iraq so far, and to apply them to Afghanistan before it is too late.
	The hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) made the point that Parliament needs to assert its authority over the Executivea point that was also made by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). I strongly support that, and I hope that the House will support our motion and the principle that an inquiry should be established, even if the precise format proposed on the Order Paper is not exactly what some right hon. and hon. Members would like. The point is the principle of the matter, and we owe it to the nation to be able to establish that.
	When Michael Foot called for a special commission to consider the Suez campaign, he cited something said by Lord John Russell in respect of the Crimea campaign a hundred years previously:
	Inquiry is the proper duty and function of the House of Commons...Inquiry is, indeed, the root of the powers of the House of Commons. Upon the result of the inquiry must depend the due exercise of those powers.[ Official Report, 16 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 442.]
	I submit that this House should support this motion.

Adam Ingram: In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary set out why the Government's view has not changed since we last debated the issue, not the least of which is that nothing has happened in that time that would require us to change our view.
	When we considered the issue in October last year, the motion was proposed by the nationalist partiesPlaid Cymru and the Scottish National party. I well understand the motivation of those political parties in that and all other matters involving the United Kingdom: they have a visceral dislike of all things British. They do not want to be part of this united country. They want to engender disharmony, disillusionment and division in all that we do as a nation. They are driven not by what is right for our armed forces in the difficult tasks that they face in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but by cheap political posturingno more than naked populism dressed up as principle.
	Although it is tempting, I would not ascribe such motives to the Conservative party. I fully accept that the role of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition is to find grounds of substance on which to hold the Government to account. Like many of my hon. Friends, I spent too many years10 yearson the Opposition Benches, and I know only too well the difficulties that that poses for party interest versus national interest.
	On this occasion, no matter how well argued the caseI pay tribute to the eloquence of the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who opened the debatethe Opposition have it wrong. A telling intervention by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) made it clear that he thought so too. He made a specific point, and although the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks is not usually flummoxed or stumped, he paused momentarily before he dealt with the issue.
	This is always a question of judgment. To undertake such an inquiry now would divert effort and attention from our prime task, which is to improve the condition of Iraq and find a more peaceful and stable future for its people.

Tobias Ellwood: Will the Minister give way?

Adam Ingram: Not at the moment. If the motion was passed, regardless of the fact that the Opposition claim that it is about establishing the principle of an inquiry, the media in this country would go into hyper-overdrive. We would have endless weeks and months of corrosive speculation about who would serve on the inquiry, what they would examine and even what their conclusions would be. I believe that it would be less of an inquiry and more of an inquisition.
	Many in this House and beyond have already come to their conclusions, yet at the same time they are calling for an inquiry. The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore) made it clear that he already knows what the outcome of the inquiry should be. He carefully avoided the earlier view of his party that we should withdraw our forces by the autumn of this year. He did not mention whether that is still the policy of his party or not, irrespective of the conditions on the ground or the consequences. If there were such an inquiry, and those who have come to their conclusions already did not agree with its outcome, they would simply dismiss it as a whitewash and continue their assertions. I am reminded of former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan's comments about the Franks report on the Falklands conflict:
	for 338 paragraphs, the Franks Report painted a splendid picture, delineating the light and shade. The glowing colours came out. When Franks got to paragraph 339, he got fed up with the canvas that he was painting and chucked a bucket of whitewash over it.
	That tends to happen with a lot of inquiries. If they do not reach the conclusions that those who call for them want, those people simply dismiss them out of hand.

Richard Younger-Ross: The Minister argues that we should not have an inquiry now because that might be difficult in terms of the media. How long do we have to wait for such an inquiry? If the war went on for another four years, would we have to wait four years? If it was the hundred years warI know that that is an absurd example, Mr. Deputy Speakerwould we wait 100 years?

Adam Ingram: I did not put forward that view just because of what would happen in the media, although I think that that would be corrosive. Let me make a serious point: we know from this debatefrom speaker after speakerthe previous debate and each time that we have discussed Iraq that people have already reached their conclusions and firm positions. They want an inquiry to confirm those positions, but that would not be the purpose of any such inquest. The hon. Gentleman's earlier intervention showed that he had reached a conclusion. He has made the firm statement that he opposed the mission from the outset and voted against it. If he were to give evidence, it would be on that basis, although I guess that no one would really be interested in the evidence that he might wish to give. However, would he accept the outcome of the inquiry if it did not stack up with his perceived position?

Tobias Ellwood: On 20 March, I asked a Foreign Ministerthe Minister for the Middle Eastwhether he thought Iraq was in a state of civil war. Since 20 March, about 8,000 Iraqis have met a violent death. Does a Defence Minister believe that Iraq is in a state of civil war?

Adam Ingram: The hon. Gentleman should remember from his military training the definition of what constitutes a civil war. An elected Government are in place in Iraq and are working assiduously to find solutions to complex problems. We and many other countries are assisting them. Yes, many lives have been lost, some of which, sadly, have been those of individuals serving alongside the Iraqi people to try to find peace and stability. However, that in itself does not constitute civil war.
	Some of the sectarian groupings and factions are beginning to talk about the need to find at least a point of contact with the Government of Iraq and coalition forces. There are thus glimmers of hope while the carnage goes on, which, as the hon. Gentleman knows only too well, is being perpetrated not by coalition forces, but by other forces, many of which are internal to Iraq but some of which are being stoked up and manipulated by external forces. Incidentally, if those forces were not in Iraq, they would be attacking us by other means. That is the harsh reality of the world in which we live.
	While this is a question of judgment, I do not believe that now is the time to set a date for a review or to reach a final decision on the best way to conduct such a review. This is a time to keep a focus on what is happening in Iraq in the here and now. Like my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, I make no excuses for saying again that the situation in Iraq is too grave for us to divert our attentions from the immediate task of best supporting the Iraqi people as they begin taking control of their future.

Angus MacNeil: Given that the Minister makes that point, why did the Prime Minister give evidence to the Baker-Hamilton inquiry in Washington?

Adam Ingram: I honestly think that the hon. Gentleman has not listened to the answers that have already been given on that point. That inquiry examined not the past, but how to deal with the present [ Interruption. ] Does the hon. Gentleman want an answer, or does he want to heckle? The inquiry was carried out to try to find solutions to some of the difficulties that we have to address. However, the motion calls for a different inquiry. I listened attentively to hon. Members' speeches. They talked about the past and some indeed argued that we should go beyond the immediate past and further back [ Interruption. ] This is a multifaceted debate. The motion calls for an inquiry on the past to learn lessons for the future, but the future is here and now. Baker-Hamilton sought to address what is in front of us.
	Our policy of focusing our efforts on the vital task of helping to develop the capacity and capability of the Iraqi authorities remains unchanged. That support is valued by the Government of Iraq. Iraqi Ministers have publicly stated their appreciation of the help and support that we provide. We would be doing them a disservice if we were to allow our attention and efforts to be diverted from supporting them, even in part.
	We are not alone in giving support to Iraq. As hon. Members will know, we are one of the 25 countries that contribute to the multinational force in Iraq. I have little doubt that they, too, would not want our attention and efforts to be diverted from the vital task in hand. I make no apologies for saying that we must continue to give our armed forces our undivided attention and support as they help Iraq's security institutions. I earnestly believe that an inquiry would do nothing to assist them and, at worst, that it could undermine their efforts. This is a question of undermining not their moralethat charge has been madebut their efforts. If senior military personnel were called away from the front or other deployments so that they could be dedicated to revisiting the part that they played in the past when they had important jobs to do, it would take them away from the vital task in hand.
	As I have indicated, I think that we are making progress in Iraq. The transfer of Maysan province in southern Iraq to the Iraqi authorities and the handover of bases in Basra city to the Iraqi security forces are ample evidence of the sterling work done by UK forces and our coalition partners, especially on training and supporting the 10th division of the Iraqi army.
	I have heard nothing in this debate that would change the Government's position that it would be wrong to launch an inquiry on our experiences in Iraq at this time. There have been several independent committees of inquiry, including those of Lord Butler and Lord Hutton. Reports have been published by the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees of the House of Commons, while Ministry of Defence lessons-learned reports have also been produced. The questions of what happened at the time and what we have to do militarily have been well trodden over, as has the wider reach of what we are trying to do by giving humanitarian, governmental, social and economic support to the people of Iraq.
	We have had many opportunities to discuss the issue; we have done so time and again. I urge the House to support the amendment proposed by the Government for one very good reason: I believe it to be correct, and I believe the motion proposed by Her Majesty's loyal Opposition to be wrong at this time. It would not in any way help the people of Iraq.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	 The House divided: Ayes 253, Noes 288.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question, That the proposed words be there added,  put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):
	 The House divided: Ayes 274, Noes 229.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved ,
	That this House notes the Resolution of 31st October 2006; recognises that there have already been four separate independent committees of inquiry into military action in Iraq; further recognises the importance of learning all possible lessons from military action in Iraq and its aftermath; and therefore declines at this time, whilst the whole effort of the Government and the armed forces is directed towards improving the condition of Iraq, to make a proposal for a further inquiry which would divert attention from this vital task.

Carers

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We now come to the second debate on the Opposition motions. I should announce to the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Jeremy Hunt: I beg to move,
	That this House recognises the vital contribution that the UK's six million carers make to society; welcomes recent announcements on carers including the Government review of the National Strategy for Carers, the New Deal for Carers and the Treasury report 'Aiming high for disabled children: better support for families' as steps towards an improvement in recognition and support for carers; notes that 54 per cent. of carers have given up work and one in five carers feel forced to do so; recognises the impacts which caring responsibilities have on family incomes, relative poverty and the health of carers themselves; is deeply concerned that an estimated 175,000 young people are carers of adults with the consequent pressures on them; calls on the Government to reduce the bureaucracy of social care provision that puts so much pressure on carers; and asks the Government to bring forward proposals for simplifying the benefit system in order to provide better support for carers and to ensure that the review of the National Strategy for Carers has both short term and long term objectives to enhance support for carers and to respond to the vital role played by carers in society.
	Today is the first day of carers week, the week when we as a country celebrate and recognise the extraordinary work of 6 million people who give up huge amounts of their time, energy and effort to look after disabled and older friends and relatives. Here is the problem: the social care budget, for which the Under-Secretary of State for Health, who is in his place, is responsible, is currently 19 billion, but Carers Week has estimated that if the amount of unpaid work done by those 6 million carers were costed, it would come to 57 billion. That means that if they stopped doing that work tomorrow and we wanted to continue with the same levels of care, we would have to quadruple the social care budget, just to stand still.
	It is not just a matter of the tax implications. There is a much more fundamental question of the type of society that we wish to be. Those of us on the Conservative Benches think that it is fundamentally right that wherever possible the main caring role is undertaken by family and friends. That is what carers want and what the cared-for person wants. The brutal truth is that because of demographic trends, the huge growth in the numbers of disabled children, and the rapidly ageing society, very soon 6 million carers will not be enough. If we want the number of carers to grow, we must be prepared to answer difficult questions about the role of the state and whether it enables and supports that caring role, or whether, as is all too often the case, it hinders and obstructs that role.
	This year's carers week theme is My life as a carer. When I read that, it reminded me of the first carer whom I met when I was a prospective parliamentary candidate. For my sins, I had agreed to be a refuse collector for the day in my prospective constituency. I had spent the morning getting mucky and dirty picking up bottles, cans and newspapers for recycling and generally thinking that it was remarkable that anyone could want to do that kind of job full time. Then I spoke to the driver of the refuse van that I was with, and he told me that 10 years ago his wife had had an accident in their garden and had become wheelchair-bound and unable to get up, get dressed, wash or cook. Although he had been able to carry on his work, his life outside work had been turned completely upside down. Rather touchingly, he said to me that he would not change her for the world. The question is whether we are doing enough to help and support people who are playing that kind of extraordinary role; Conservative Members believe that we are not.

Lembit �pik: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Motor Neurone Disease Association would agree with his view that we as a society have not done enough to recognise carers? Is he aware that the cost to the state of caring for people suffering from motor neurone disease is 241 million per year, and that it would be a great deal more if we did not have the enormous voluntary contribution that he is discussing? It is about time that we recognised that and gave those carers the rights that I imagine he would agree with.

Jeremy Hunt: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I am happy to praise the Motor Neurone Disease Association because he said earlier that if I did so he would buy me a pint in the bar later. In fact, I am genuinely happy to praise its work, because carers for people with motor neurone disease demonstrate one of the critical factors about carers, which is that their caring role often lasts for 24 hours, creating enormous stress and pressure. That is why it is incredibly important to do everything to support that role.
	Before I talk about the things that are going wrong, it is also important to talk about the things that have gone right. There have been a lot of changes over the past 15 years that have helped the role of carers. The Carers (Recognition and Services) Act 1995 set up carers' assessments. In 1999, we had the first ever national carers strategy. The Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000 extended the right of direct payments to families with disabled children. The Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004 gave local councils an obligation to promote carers' assessments to those entitled to them. Last year, as I am sure that the Minister will tell us, we had the Work and Families Act 2006, which extended the right of flexible working to carers. We have had some modest improvements in respite care. The Pensions Bill, which is before Parliament at the moment, will strengthen the rights of carers in terms of entitlement to state pensions.
	However, eight years on from the national carers strategy we are still in a situation whereby three quarters of carers say that they are worse off as a result of their caring role, 79 per cent. of carers say that their health has been affected by their caring role, and one in five carers say that they have had to reduce the amount of food they buy because of the financial pressures created by their caring. I am afraid that the Government's response has been disappointing. They have promised yet another reviewa review of the strategy involving, we are promised, the widest ever consultation with carers. In the end, however, this is the politics of talk, talk. The danger of that is not only that it does nothing in itself but that it obscures the fundamental problemthe Government's thinking that the only solution to these problems is financial, which means that carers are made to wait in a queue alongside everyone else who is calling on public resources and get restricted to the occasional scraps. We need a much more radical and imaginative approach. In particular, we need to slay the myth that the only way to improve the lives of the UK's 6 million carers is to increase spending on the system, when often it is the system itself that is failing.

David Drew: There was a consensus following the Sutherland report, and it is disappointing that that was broken by the Government on financial grounds. There should be free nursing and social care, but people should have to pay for their accommodation once they get above a certain income threshold. If we had moved in that direction, we might have solved the problem.

Jeremy Hunt: The hon. Gentleman is right. There is a huge challenge ahead in terms of how we finance social care provision, and it is particularly acute given the changing demographics. I hope that he will agree with what I am about to say about changing the system to ensure that much greater resources are directed to carers.
	Two Under-Secretaries from two Departments are present, so let me deal with them one at a time. I shall start with the Department of Health. Let us consider the example that I gave of the refuse collector from Farnham. When his wife became disabled, he would have had to grapple with three levels of bureaucracy in the social service system. The first is the carer's needs assessment. For that, he would have to provide 140 different pieces of information spread over 40 pages and three different forms. Secondly, his wife would have to undergo possibly five different assessments. She would have to: go through a contact centre to ascertain whether she was eligible; do a fair access to community services assessment followed by a community care assessment, and she might have to undergo a specialist assessment for physiotherapy or occupational therapy. She then might have to do a further assessment, which is namedsomewhat ironicallythe single assessment process. If we examine the questions that both must answer, two thirds of the questions that he has to answer are already asked of her.
	Councils throughout the country would like to reduce the bureaucracy of the assessment process but legislation requires much of the assessing, thus making reduction difficult. The third layer of bureaucracy is perhaps the worst because it is hidden. It is the bureaucracy that providers of social care must tolerate. It comprises: reports to get star ratings from the Commission for Social Care Inspection; 26 performance assessment frameworks, including key thresholds; delivery and improvement standards reports for the Audit Commission; best value performance indicator reports; comprehensive performance assessment reports, and, for the Department of Health, the referrals, assessments and packages of care reports. All that bureaucracy comes at a huge price of 2 billion. That money is used in the assessment and commissioning process, not in delivering the services that carers and disabled people need.

Ivan Lewis: Given the hon. Gentleman's remarks, will he withdraw the Conservative party's opposition to electronic data sharing, which is at the heart of our capacity to reduce bureaucracy in public services?

Jeremy Hunt: Let me put the Under-Secretary right: we have no opposition to electronic data sharing when it happens in a Department for a defined purpose such as simplifying the assessment process.

Anne McGuire: Would the hon. Gentleman and his party object strongly to data sharing between the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions to fulfil the objective that he identified in his comments?

Jeremy Hunt: If there is a good reason, such as simplifying the complicated assessment processes, we would be happy to consider data sharing. However, we oppose building a national database, such as that required for the identity card scheme. Perhaps the Under-Secretary will tell me how many carers it would help if we scrapped the ID card scheme, which will cost 5.7 billion. We object to that, not to sharing data for a valid purpose.
	Does the Under-Secretary of State for Health acknowledge that the system that was designed to help carers and disabled people has become so burdened with bureaucracy that it adds massively to their daily stress? I will now let him off the hook, unless he wants to respond to that question, and move to the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. She knows that more than half of carers are forced to give up work to undertake their caring role. To what benefits are they entitled?
	Carers are entitled to five different benefits: the carer's allowance; the carer's premium in income support; housing benefit; council tax benefit, and the community care grant. I have all the forms that carers have to complete. Can the Under-Secretary guess how many questions we ask people to answer if they want to apply for all five benefits? Does she have any idea? I shall put her out of her agony and tell her that the answer is 769 questions over 170 pages. The state is therefore saying, We understand and value the role you're performing and we'd like to help you. Kindly complete the attached 769 questions over 170 pages and we'll tell you if you're eligible for help.
	It might be justifiable to ask a lot of questions if we needed lots of unique information, but of those 769 questions, only 14820 per cent.ask unique questions, with 80 per cent. repeated. No wonder Carers UK says that the application for carer's allowance leaves carers
	confused, angry and with little faith in how the system works, with advisers caught up in complicated advice.

David Taylor: I launched North-West Leicestershire carers week in the Marlene Reid centre, Coalville, this morning and many of the remarks I heard relate to what the hon. Gentleman has said. Would he be surprised at the figure provided to me by a Department for Work and Pensions representative on a stand in the exhibition that only 500,000 people of the 6 million carers, 3 million of whom are not in work, actually apply for and receive carer's allowance under the current system? I have not had a chance to ratify it, but is it not a surprisingly low figure? Does he agree and can he authenticate that figure?

Jeremy Hunt: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I am not surprised by that figure, as there is a total of 740 million of unclaimed carers' benefits. The result is that many carers fall into poverty. A third are in debt, a third cannot afford to pay some of their utility bills, while another third cannot afford essential repairs to their homes. We need to recognise that, just as there is a direct link between disability and poverty, so there can also be a direct link between caring responsibilities and poverty.

Michael Weir: Does the hon. Gentleman also accept something that I have encountered in dealing with carers in my constituencythat many are of an age at which they do not feel they want to claim benefit? It is rather similar to pensioners and pension credit. An elderly woman said to me, What's a carer? I have always looked after my disabled daughter. This is another barrier that has to be overcome. It is not just the fact that the money is not claimed: there are reasons for that, just as there are with pension credit.

Jeremy Hunt: I would agree, but one of the reasons many people do not want to claim it is that the form is so complicated and difficult. Yes, there are barriers in people's thinkingand these are difficult problems to overcomebut there are also practical barriers that we, as a state, can do something about, and the complexity of the form is one of them.

Bill Wiggin: In my constituency, there are also many children who care for their disabled parents. Are they expected to fill out those 750-odd questions as well?

Jeremy Hunt: My hon. Friend makes an important point. If he had attended the debate earlier this year about the life chances of disabled children, he would have heard in my speech that for families with disabled children, the number of questions that have to be answered is not 769, but 1,118. The situation is actually worse for those parents.
	What is most worrying about this complexity in the benefit system is how it makes it difficult for carers to work. All these benefits have different rules about the work that can or cannot be done. On carer's allowance, it is possible to earn 87 a week, but any more and the benefit is lost. For income support, anything above 20 is deducted pound for pound. With housing benefit, anything more than 20 is deducted at a rate of 65 per cent., while with council tax benefit it is deducted at the rate of 20 per cent. More than half of carers give up work because of their role, but nearly half would like to work if they could, so why are we penalising them?
	This is not simply a moral question; it is also, because of the demographic crisis on our doorstep, a practical question. I was trying to think of a way to personalise this issue for the select group of hon. Members in their places this evening. The average age of an MP is actually 50. By the time the average MP becomes 75, there will be an additional 3.2 million 75-year-olds compared with the number of them today. In that period, because of the ageing population, there will be 500,000 fewer children; yet there will be 500,000 more disabled children and all of them will need carers. Six out of 10 men and seven out of 10 women will become carers at some point in their lifetime, but this involves children as well. There are also 175,000 child carers, and that number is growing.
	The choice is simple. Do we want family and friends to remain the mainstay of the caring that takes place in our society, or do we want to gamble by doing nothing to reform the bureaucracy of the social care system and the complexity of the benefits system? Do we want to risk those carers giving up and passing that responsibility on to the state, which would be the worst possible outcome for cared-for people?

Gary Streeter: My hon. Friend is making a powerful case and I totally agree with him about streamlining the benefits system; carers certainly call for that. Do they not also call for a bit more help from the statethat is, from all of usto enable them occasionally to have access to respite care and short breaks? Many of those wonderful people and hard-pressed families are at breaking point. Is not there a lot more that we could do to provide respite care and short breaks? Will my hon. Friend address that point for a few moments?

Jeremy Hunt: No one has done more than my hon. Friend to campaign for respite care provision. We made significant progress this year, following the Treasury review, when respite care for an additional 40,000 families was announced. He is absolutely right. According to Mencap, eight out of 10 families with disabled children are at breaking point because of the lack of respite care. This is a pressing issue. Dealing with the complexity of the benefit system and the bureaucracy of the social care system is one of the major pressures that these families face, and we could do something about it.
	We need to stop talking and start acting. As a shadow Minister, I can offer only the shallow comfort of words. Ministers, however, can offer the real hope of action. We have told them what to do and when they must do it. Six million carers will be watching this week to see whether they are listening.

Ivan Lewis: I beg to move, To leave out from review to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
	of the first ever National Strategy for carers, the New Deal for Carers and the Treasury report Aiming high for disabled children: better support for families as steps towards an improvement in recognition and support for carers; notes that the review of the National Strategy includes a far reaching consultation with carers and others to make recommendations for the short, medium and long-term; further welcomes the extra 25 million for short-term home-based respite care for carers and the extra 3 million towards establishing a national helpline for carers announced in 2007; congratulates the Government for introducing in 2007 the new Expert Carers Programme; further notes that the Pensions Bill currently before Parliament includes a package of reforms to recognise the contribution made by carers and ensure that they can build up better pension records; further notes that the right to request flexible working introduced by this Government will help carers better balance their work and caring benefits; and further welcomes the substantial improvements made to the benefits available to low income carers.'.
	This issue should unite all sides of the House. National carers week provides us with an important opportunity to pay tribute to the remarkable contribution of carers to their families, friends and our society, and to shine a light on many remarkable and inspirational personal stories, but also to face up to our solemn responsibility to build a system and a society that address the needs of carers, both in fulfilling their caring role and as people who have a right to a life of their own. Observing national carers week is like throwing a pebble into the sea. It will generate a ripple but leave the vast expanse of oceanthe lives of 6 million carerslargely untouched. One week is a catalyst; our challenge is to make a difference 52 weeks a year and 365 days a year to the carers in every community in every part of the country who are coping with unique situations, but also with common problems.
	As we face this responsibility, we should not make the mistake of believing that Government or Parliament have all the solutions. We must listen to and learn from individual carers and the organisations who are their voice. I want to pay tribute to national organisations such as Carers UK, Crossroads, the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, Partners in Policymaking, the Children's Society and all the organisations that are part of the Every Disabled Child Matters coalition.
	I also want to pay tribute to the hundreds of self-help groups, voluntary organisations and local authorities up and down the country that support carers and enable them to have the best possible quality of life, as well as the individual heroes who exist in every hon. Member's constituency. In my own constituency, Geraldine Green is a remarkable person. As a grandma, she is full-time carer to grandchildren who have autism. As a social entrepreneur, she runs Hurdles, a voluntary organisation offering a range of support services to disabled children and their families. In her spare timeI use the term jokinglyalong with a team of volunteers, she has just opened a caf with the aim of providing training and work opportunities for young people with learning disabilities so that they can develop the skills and confidence necessary to secure a job of their own. Then there is Jill Pay, whom the Chancellor and I met when we launched the new deal for carers recently. She looks after her daughter Rowan, who has severe learning disabilities, and is supported in doing so by her eldest daughter, Camilla. Geraldine, Jill and Camilla's spirit, tenacity, courage and flair are inspirational, but their frustration and anger at the system must be a wake-up call to us all.
	In many ways, that frustration is summed up by a mother I met recently in my constituency. She has a son with autism, and two things that she said stuck out, and could have been articulated by far too many carers: Why don't the professionals seem to understand that I am the expert on my son? and Why do I have to shout before anybody listens?
	As the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) said, it is estimated that the country has 6 million carers overallarguably, about one in every street. Given the likely consequences of changes in our society, that figure will become one in every family. As the hon. Gentleman said, the vast majority of us are likely to become carers. It will no longer be somebody else's concern.

Jeremy Hunt: The Minister has talked about the number of people who are likely to become carers. Can he explain why his Department is currently refusing to fund the inclusion of a question about caring responsibilities in the 2011 census? Such a question was included in the previous census. Many carer organisations are worried, however, that if his Department is not willing to put up the funds for the same question to be asked in the 2011 census, we will not know how many carers society has.

Ivan Lewis: As part of the review that we are about to undertake, that is exactly the kind of issue that we need to address. That will be part of the fundamental review of the new carers strategy, which we shall develop and work on in the period ahead.

Philip Dunne: On the subject of the census and listening to the organisations listed by the Minister at the beginning of his remarks, I hope that he will listen to the representations made to his Department today by Shropshire Partners in Care. Its petition, which I delivered with other Shropshire MPs, highlights the problems of process whereby the Government rely on out-of-date 2001 census data to determine the allocation of funding for the elderly, adults with learning difficulties and others in care. Demographic changes, and changes in health, are moving faster than the census data can catch up with them.

Ivan Lewis: In a moment I shall talk about demographic change, which is why, in the next two decades, the vast majority of people in this country will become carers. Of course I have sympathy with constituents who have strong passionate feelings about their areas, but neither the hon. Gentleman nor the hon. Member for South-West Surrey made one policy or spending commitment during their contributions to the debate. Theirs were all fine warm words, many of which I, as the Minister responsible in the Department of Health, would have no problem with. But they made not one extra spending commitment in relation to the needs of carers.

Jeremy Hunt: In that case, will the Minister give a policy commitment about reducing the bureaucracy of social service provision?

Ivan Lewis: As part of the review of the needs of carers, we will listen [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman referred to the review being all talk. To be clear, he therefore wants a process in which senior civil servants and Ministers sit in offices in Westminster and Whitehall and impose a new strategy on carers, rather than engaging with people in the real world who experience services daily, and ensuring that there is a bottom-up strategy in which carers identify the priorities and what they expect from the state.

Sally Keeble: Will my hon. Friend confirm that a key Government recommendation was that local councils should appoint lead people to liaise with carers and co-ordinate the services that they need? That should overcome a lot of the difficulties that, as the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) suggests, many people experience.

Ivan Lewis: I entirely agree, but localismin which the Conservative party also believesmeans that we do not impose any one model on care services run by local authorities or primary care trusts. The outcome of the review of the needs of disabled children and their families illustrated the importance of the lead professional who helps families to navigate the system, which is at the heart of the provision of modern personalised public services. Those are the changes that we need to see, in the context of reform of social care and of public services more generally.

Jeremy Wright: I am sure that all carers would like to be helped to find their way through the problems that becoming a carer throws up, but would not the adviser's job be much easier if the benefits system, in particular, were much less complex? The Government could do something about that.

Ivan Lewis: Let me say gently that this is the Government who introduced a national carers strategy in the first place, in 1999. This is the Government who introduced the annual carers grant that goes to every local authority, and this is the Government who gave carers the right to request flexible working. We will take no lectures from Opposition Members. There may still be issues to be addressed, but that is precisely why we are now going to engage in the most extensive consultation ever, with carers in every community in the country, to ensure that we can make the necessary changes.

Hywel Francis: As chair of the all-party parliamentary carers group, I want to record my thanks to the official Opposition for initiating the debate and giving us an opportunity to showcase the tremendous advances achieved by this Labour Government over the last decade. Will my hon. Friend reiterate his warm response to what I said last week in congratulating the Labour-led Welsh Assembly Government on establishing, in that Government, a carers championan example that we should follow here in England?

Ivan Lewis: If there is a vacancy for such a role in this Government, I think that my hon. Friend would be an excellent candidatealthough it is not for me to hand out ministerial appointments, especially at this stage in the political cycle. On the basis of his personal experiences of caring, he has been a tremendous champion and advocate of change in our society, to transform the experiences of carers in Wales and throughout the United Kingdom. Over time, the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004, which he promoted, will make a massive difference to the opportunities available to carers. He should be very proud of the difference that he has made.
	I must make some progress, as Back Benchers will want to make their own contributions. I was talking about the changes taking place in our society, to which we have a duty to respond. The demographic realities are that people are living longer, which will continue, and that disabled people want not just longer lives but full lives. There have been medical advances too. Another fact, which is often missed, is that people are demandingnot being forcedto remain in their own homes rather than going into institutions. The implication of that for the role of carers is profound, and will become even more profound.
	We must also recognise that carers are people first, with their own needs, aspirations and fears. They need help with caring, butI do not think that the hon. Member for South-West Surrey mentioned this oncethey want a life as well, and public policy should reflect that.
	I have already referred to the tremendous progress made in recent years. I am not suggesting that the Conservative Government did nothing, but we were presented with a pretty blank piece of paper in terms of the commitment that Government were willing to make to carers historically. We introduced the 1999 strategythe Prime Minister's strategywe awarded an annual carers grant to every local authority, and we produced the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000. I referred earlier to the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act and the right to request flexible working.
	Pension credit legislation is going through Parliament, and a tremendous package of supportwhich is overduewas announced several weeks ago, involving a partnership between the Treasury, the Department for Education and Skills and my Department. That will significantly enhance the support available to disabled children and their families in every community. There will be many more short breaks and much more respite care, along with lead professionals, and a focus on a transition that is often difficultthe cliff edge between being a child or a young person and becoming an adult.
	We are now about to make a reality of our announcement of a couple of months ago of a new deal for carers. The national telephone helpline will mean that carers have easy, ready access to information focused on their needs. Carers tell us that they want to be able to make a call or to log on to the web and to know that they will end up in the right place and have their needs met.

Rosie Winterton: Signposted.

Ivan Lewis: Carers want to be signposted in an appropriate way, as my right hon. Friend says.
	We are developing the expert carers programme, so that carers in every community have the training and support to develop the skills and confidence not only to be able to look after the person they are caring for, but to engage on a far more equal footing with professionals. There is also the emergency respite care fund. Carers themselves have told us that one of the greatest difficulties they face is a sudden caring breakdown, a sudden difficulty with the person they are looking after and a sudden need for emergency support. We will make further announcements later this week about the consultation. Over time, we want to bring about a system that is on their side, and which gives carers a life of their own. Issues have to be addressed.
	I was interested by the curious contribution of the hon. Member for South-West Surrey on the question of information sharing, because he said that information could be shared, but only within a Department. But the first thing that carers say to us is, We want a holistic, cross-Government approach. Each one of us is a person, not a series of compartments as represented by Government or local delivery mechanisms. To suggest that the Conservative party is happy for electronic data to be shared, but only if it is within a Department, misses the point and fails to listen to what carers tell us about their priorities.
	I turn to the question of social care, which is massively important to the quality of carers' lives. We need a new consensus for a new settlement. We must recognise that society is changing so rapidly that we need a new balance between the state and the responsibilities of families and individuals. That settlement must be fair but it must also be sustainable. We must be clear that resources will always be finite. The question is: what, on a long-term basis, is both just and sustainable in terms of funding a social care system that is fit for purpose to meet the challenges of demographic change?
	In the context of changing the social care system, we also need to transfer a lot of power and control from organisations to those who use services and to their families through individual budgets, direct payments, person-centred planning and self-directed support. We need to move away from a system in which professionals determine the life chances of individuals, and transfer a maximum amount of power and control to those who use services, and to their families.
	I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), who has worked alongside me on that agenda in making tremendous progress for disabled people in our society. She has not only served as the Minister with responsibility for disabled people but has been the champion of disabled people across Government, and she has continued to make the point that every Department must fulfil its responsibility.
	I now move on to the national health service. It seems that we have to do more in terms of access to general practitioners. They are often the gatekeepers. for carers, they are the trusted professionals. We need to ensure that in future GPs give far greater priority to identifying carers and ensuring that they are referred to the right service and to the place where they will have their needs met.
	As the hon. Member for South-West Surrey said, we must also acknowledge that the health of carers often deteriorates as a consequence of fulfilling caring responsibilities. That has implications for the NHS. Carers, more than most, require a truly integrated approach at local level between local government, the local national health service and the voluntary sector. We need services in local communities to be much more joined up. We need to move from a notion of partnership to one of integration, and to recognise that the prize that we now seek is not simply a synergy between the NHS and social care. In order to protect the health and well-being of carers, the NHS, all the services local government commissions and provides, and the voluntary sector need to harness their resources efficiently and in a joined-up way.
	Employment is another issue. Some carers might want to combine their caring responsibilities with having a job, and others who have been out of the labour market for a long period might want to have the chance to re-enter it. We must look into what support we might give them. Education and training are important factors.
	It is right that the system draws a distinction between adult services and children's services, but we need to ensure that that does not lead to young carers being failed. There is a danger of that happening. We know from evidence and researchand from some powerful and sad recent storiesthat there are many hidden cases of children and young people fulfilling caring responsibilities for a parent. A child or young person should not do that alone without having a lot of support. That affects their education, and their chance to do the things that children and young people ought to do. Society and Government need to take a fresh look at the support that we offer young carers, not only through our Department but in the education system.
	The hon. Member for South-West Surrey asked about the benefit system. I agree that we need to examine benefits, taxation and pensions in an integrated way. The key issue here is the financial impact of caring on the carer and their family. In no circumstances should a carer have to live in poverty as a consequence of having made the choice to care.
	In an Adjournment debate last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), who has now left the Chamber, raised the issues of leisure, friendships and social relationships. Many carers tell us that they suffer isolation and loneliness. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that carers have access to leisure opportunitiesto a social life, to friendships and to informal networks.
	The reform of public services is not only about addressing leadership, management, targets and organisational changes. We must not forget that pressure from those who use services and who fight and campaign for them is also important. That is why having a voice, information and advocacy are crucial. We must ensure not only that we change public services by reforming systems, but that we transfer a lot more power and opportunity to influence public services at the local level to those who use them, and to their families.
	The support we give to carers will define the character of our country as we face up to future challenges. We must care for them and be compassionate, and we must empower and support them so that they can maximise the quality of life of the loved one or friend whom they are caring for. Carers are usually better placed than the state to offer appropriate care, but they need the state to be on their side. They need a state that is active and enshrines rights in law, that provides accessible and quality information, advocacy and support, that personalises public services so that respect and dignity are at their heart, and that ensures that choosing to care does not mean giving up one's own life.
	As a result of demographic change, medical advances and changing expectations, the needs of carers will become more, not less, important in the future. Caring will ask new questions of every family and community, of the state and the voluntary sector, of the husband and the wife, and of the son and the daughter. This Government will provide leadership and ensure that carers are at the heart of a new contract with the people, so that the system is on their side and they can have a life of their own. To make that aspiration a reality is the prize, and it must become a shared mission.

Sandra Gidley: I welcome the chance to debate these issues today, at the beginning of carers week. Although there has been a little bit of acrimony, it is fairly obvious from the speeches of the Minister and of the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) that there is a genuine will to do something, so I do not intend to make many party political points this evening.
	At the beginning of carers week, we are obviously celebrating the contribution that carers make to society. The Carers UK website published today the results of a survey that it carried out on behalf of 3,500 carers, who are probably fairly representative of the 6 million out there. The results highlighted the negative impact that the role of carer can have on a carer's relationship with their partner. Some 66 per cent. said that their relationship had suffered, and 60 per cent. said that they had little quality time. Interestingly, when they did have such time, 21 per cent. used it to catch up on sleep, so it is clear that other things suffer, too. Importantly, nearly two thirds63 per cent.felt a loss of identity.
	For many people, caring is a long-term commitment, so it is worrying to note that three quarters of carers have not had a regular break from caring in the previous 12 months, and that 38 per cent. have not had a single day off in the last 12 months. I will be kind and concede that the Government have put 25 million toward respite care, which was mentioned in an earlier intervention. That is of course very welcome, but it is targeted at emergency respite care only. We have to look at ways of freeing up money to make sure that people have regular access to respite. As constituency MPs, we have all probably had people coming to see us saying, I could cope if only I knew that I was going to get regular time off at some point in the future. Services are so stretched that even if time off is bookedof course, booking time off has an impact on people's lives because they cannot therefore be spontaneous; they have to sort out their social lives weeks, if not months, aheadit is often cancelled at the last moment or changed because an emergency has arisen involving someone with a greater need. Carers realise that there are people with greater needs, but it is difficult if we cannot honour even small commitments.
	In a trial on the Isle of Wight, carers received regular respite every few months. Respite care was always with the same nursing home, so the staff got to know the individual concerned and the carer got to know the people in whose care their loved one was being entrusted. The system seemed to work very well. If people feel that they are being treated as human beings and can have a regular break, they can carry on caring for longer. Some work needs to be done on the economicsperhaps as part of the strategybecause we do not really know the answers at the moment. That system seems like a good thing, but perhaps some pilots are called for properly to assess the long-term benefit.
	The survey to which I referred also looked at carers' financial situation. The Minister rightly made the point that nobody should be financially worse off because they have caring responsibilities, but the reality is that 67 per cent. said that they were, and 28 per cent. said that they felt unable to support the family properly. One in five carers is forced to give up work, but many of them are missing out on the benefits, pensions and practical support that is available. Here, there is something of a double whammy. As has been pointed out, caring is a full-time occupation. Many people who suddenly acquire these responsibilities do not also have the time or energy to access the very complex benefits system and to work out what they are entitled to. As has also been pointed out, even if they did have the time, the system is complex, inconsistent and bureaucratic.
	According to estimates, carers actually save the economy 57 billion each year, but carer's allowance is still very low at 48.65 a week. Rates of unclaimed benefit also remain high. Although, in theory, part of the problem is being tackled, in practice, carers are not getting the little to which they are entitled. I agree that there must be a wholesale review of the carers benefit system, including the provision that is available to retired carers. That is another anomaly that must be reviewed, and I am sure that during the review, it will be brought to the Minister's attention time and again.
	The anomaly for young carers is that they cannot claim benefits if they take part in education for 21 hours a week or more. By young carers, I mean young adults who may wish to take part in some education. The anomaly is a disincentive to young carers, because they do not have the resources to carry on furthering their education or training, and if they do not take the opportunity when most of their peers do so, they could be locked into a lifetime of social exclusion.

Annette Brooke: Is my hon. Friend concerned about what might happen to young carers when the school leaving age is raised to 18, and about whether the Government will give that every consideration in the review?

Sandra Gidley: My hon. Friend makes a very good point. She has a long commitment to the subject of young carers, and I hope that her point will be addressed by the Minister when she winds up, because it is valid.
	The issue is about joined-up government. There are Ministers present from two different Departments, but it has already been pointed out that the Department for Education and Skills has a role to play, and I suggest that the Department for Communities and Local Government has a role, too.

Mark Williams: One of my hon. Friends talked about young adults and the challenges facing them as carers. Is my hon. Friend aware of primary school children who have been undertaking caring roles? Children as young as eight years oldat arguably the most formative time in their educationare taking on caring roles out of necessity. Does she agree that we must urgently consider models to support those children?

Sandra Gidley: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I shall return briefly to that subject later in my comments.
	Older carers often have to change jobs. The survey that I mentioned said that 57 per cent. felt less able to focus on a career, and respondents also quoted reduced promotion prospects and the fact that they were unable to take up training opportunities. Some 40 per cent. found it difficult to get back on the job ladder when returning to work. When asked how their working life could be made easier, one fifth felt that they needed greater support from their boss, and 18 per cent. more understanding from colleagues. Again, access to carers advice came up during that part of the survey.
	There is a need to ensure that the way in which companies structure their training programmes does not discriminate against carers. Often, companies' work practices are assessed for gender, and parental provision is also taken care of. It is also important to note that 80 per cent. of carers are of working age, and 3 million already combine work and care. Advice needs to be made available to them so that they can perhaps change their career slightly, or learn how to suggest alternative working practices to their employers. Of those people who were not working because of their caring responsibilities, one third said that they would return if the right alternative care and flexible support were available.
	The peak age for caring is 45 to 64 years old, and the cost of replacing the expertise of a worker of that age is immense. Flexible working is one way forward, and I recognise the Government's efforts in that direction, but many companies still enshrine the old ways of working, and I do not think that quite enough has been done to encourage companies regarding the way forward.
	At a recent meeting with BT, I learned that 75 per cent. of its work force were flexible workers. The company decided that it would be resented if flexible working was available only to parents or carers, so the same provision was offered to everybody. As a result, BT has identified average productivity gains of 21 per cent., cost savings, increased customer satisfaction, increased creativity and energy andno surprisea decrease in sick leave. To introduce a green theme to the debate, BT calculated that it had saved 12 million litres of fuel. Flexible working is good for people and good for the environment so I hope more will be done to encourage other companies to follow those who have successfully adopted those practices.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) mentioned young carers; there are 175,000 in the UK, 13,000 of whom care for more than 50 hours a week. In 1999, the national carers strategy made a number of proposals to improve recognition and support for young carers, but unfortunately only 18 per cent. of young carers actually receive an assessment of their needs. I am sure Ministers agree that the problem urgently needs to be addressed. Sometimes, there is a family decision not to seek support, so more work needs to be done with families to reassure them that if social services are aware of the problems they will not take the children away and break up the family, as that may be a concern. Sometimes, however, lack of support is simply indicative of a failing system.
	There is often poor awareness in schools. Teachers may tell a child off for not doing their homework or for being late, when the situation may have been prompted by the child's caring responsibilities. Such an approach does not encourage school attendance.
	Last week, in the debate in Westminster Hall, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole recommended a whole-family approacha point echoed by the Minister in his speech. My hon. Friend welcomed more joined-up thinking between adult and children's services, because they are all part of support for the family. The system may fall down because a parent who needs support during the night may not meet the criteria for adult social services, yet in practice there is a huge impact on the child who may have to get up every night to undertake caring responsibilities.
	The Government have greatly progressed the agenda. Mention was made earlier of the carers hotline. I rang the hotline because I thought it was such a good ideaas the Minister said, people want access to advice when they actually need itso I was a little surprised to hear a recorded message:
	This hotline is only available Wednesday and Thursday between the hours of 10 to 12 or 2 to 4.
	At other times, people are merely sent a package of information.

Ivan Lewis: May I point out to the hon. Lady that the helpline does not exist yet? I do not know which helpline she is referring to, but it is not the one we are talking about establishing.

Sandra Gidley: In that case, the situation is even worse because I used a link from a Government website. I had assumed that the helpline had not been established so I was delighted to find what I thought was the official website. Perhaps the Minister who winds up the debate will tell us when the hotline is to be established and what service we will be getting for the 3 million that has been allocated, but clearly not yet spent.
	As a society we have to start getting our heads around the problems and challenges. Caring is an emerging electoral issue. An ageing population means that 3 million extra carers will be needed by 2037, in addition to the 6 million at present. In many ways, the issue is hidden because carers do not have time to lobby.
	Finally, I again plug the book, The Selfish Pig's Guide to Caring, by Hugh Marriott, which shows clearly that carers do not express their feelings because they risk appearing uncaring. We need to encourage honesty in the debate. In a survey, when people were asked which words best expressed the experience of being a carer, 74 per cent. said stressful and 71 per cent. said demanding. More heartening, 31 per cent. found caring rewarding and 20 per cent. found it fulfilling.
	In many ways I hope there will be no vote tonight. We need to change the habits of a lifetime and reach cross-party consensus to change those percentages and move the agenda forward.

Sally Keeble: I will be brief, because I recognise that other people want to contribute to the debate. I welcome the debate and the remarks made by the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt). Bureaucracy always needs to be simplified. However, to make that an end in itself is limiting. It is also true to say that the issue is partly about the nature of the society in which we live, the kind of society we want and the importance of supporting people so that they can look after their families in their own homes, which is obviously right. People will always look after their families, relatives and neighbours in quite remarkable circumstances. For generations, peoplean awful lot of them womenhave looked after their family members at great sacrifice to themselves. Part of the challenge faced by the Government is how to make sure that people are able to act as carers with dignity and support and without running themselves ragged in the process.
	The Government have done a great deal in this respect and two areas have not been highlighted enough. First, there is the carers supplement to pension credit. That is enormously important because it deals with the anomaly that the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) pointed out in relation to people who, post-retirement, are suddenly deemed not to be carers any more and with the difficultly implicit in the carers benefit system, which is that carers are recompensed for lost wages. The carers supplement to pension credit has been under-recognised. I also suspect that the pressure in relation to pension credit and means-testing has discouraged retired people who are carers from recognising that this important element of support exists.
	Secondly, there is the provision in the Pensions Bill for carer credits and for widening the scheme so that it is not linked just to certain restricted benefits. That will enable quite a number of people in my constituency, where there is a high level of participation in work, to feel a bit more confident about giving up full-time employment to take on caring responsibilities, without fearing that that will leave them without a pension in retirement. Those two points are important and are perhaps not sufficiently recognised.
	I want to comment on two areas of caring. Last Friday, in preparation for carers week, I spent time with some carers. Two of them were caring for spouses who were in ill health and a number of issues were raised about what happens when people's health fluctuates and the carer finds themselves falling in and out of recognised care. The other group of people who seem to have had little recognition and who do heroic work are grandparents who take on the care of their grandchildren. I spent some time with Tanya Kettleborough. She and her husband took on two granddaughters after the girls' mother horrendously abused and then abandoned them. Those two girls had the emotional difficulties of being abused and abandoned, and one of the girls was also left with profound physical disabilities because of the level and nature of the abuse.
	To an extent, the hon. Member for South-West Surrey was right: there is an issue about how much money carers get. In order to give her grandchildren a secure home, the grandmother had got a residence order, so she had forgone the opportunity of getting foster care payments, which would have given her an income of about 600 a week given the scale of the disabilities of one of the children. Instead, she got payments of about 370 for two weeks. She thus gave up about half her possible income, yet she said that she would do that again because it was what she wanted to do for her grandchildren. The care that she gives is astonishing. I had met the little girl before and I am sure that she has made much more progress in a couple of years with her grandmother than she would have done in residential care, which would have been the alternative.
	While the grandmother said that this was not about the money and that she would do the same thing again, then came the buts. She wanted a new buggy for Shannon, the little child, because the child had outgrown her existing buggy and all the thrashing about had weakened it, meaning that it was no longer safe. In addition, the buggy did not have proper straps for the little girl, so the grandmother had to get some on eBay. As we all know, there are long waits for wheelchairs and buggies for disabled children. I think that the lack of buggy was down to one of the health providers.
	Padded walls were needed for the bedroom because the little girl would bang her head on the wall. Someone first said that they would pad all the wall and then that they would pad just around the bed. While that would be just about manageable, it had not been done. There was also no chair for the little girl, so she had to sit in her buggy indoors. While a chair had been loaned by social services, it was inappropriate and not big enough. A ramp was also needed to get the child out of the house in the buggy. That was down to the housing authority, although an occupational therapist was required to carry out an assessment and procure the ramp. The grandmother's real problems were not money, her ageshe was in her early-50s and had to give up work completely, although she had worked for her entire adult life, which obviously damaged her pension rightsher job security, or the fact that she was up all night with a little girl who could not sleep, but that she could not get the things that she needed, that there were waiting lists and that she did not know when the occupational therapist would come.

Nadine Dorries: Does the hon. Lady agree that the story that she is articulately relaying is repeated by carers to Members in constituencies throughout the country over and over again? The problem for each family is usually not obtaining one particular piece of equipment, whether that is a bath hoist, proper padding for a bed, incontinence sheets, or the right chair, but that they cannot get three or four things. The problem continues over the years. How long will it take to get this right?

Sally Keeble: I think that the example that I am citing is especially poignant because of the nature of the family involved. The system must be able to adapt to the needs of many carers, especially those who are pitched into it, and to recognise that many small support systems are needed to make such care placements possible. It is important that local authority leaders in managing care are appointed and work effectively. Targets such as those on waiting times for operations should be extended to the time allowed for the provision of aids and adaptations. It is completely impossible to care at home for someone who has outgrown their wheelchair, or if aids and adaptations are provided only after a person's physical condition has deteriorated to the extent that they can no longer be used. For example, I have a friend who received his hoists only after his condition had virtually reached the point at which he could not use them. There is an urgent need to recognise and address that situation. I put it to the hon. Member for South-West Surrey that those needs are every bit as pressing as, if not more pressing than, the need to deal with some of paperwork involving benefit claims.
	Although the hon. Member for Romsey and others have raised this point, I wish to emphasise the situation for young carers. The website of the excellent young carers initiative shows that in the 2001 census, it was estimated that there were 5,016 carers aged five to seven providing one to nine hours of care a week, and that 943 of those carers provided 50 hours or more of care a week. Those astonishing statistics obviously have implications for every agency. I should also point out that a number of those children are bullied, and there is a real need for schools to consider the emotional support that those children need in order to cope with their difficult situation.
	I simply echo the comments made by other hon. Members about the outstanding support that carers provide; in many ways they are the unsung heroes and heroines of the care world. In her response, I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), will set out exactly how the Government will meet the challenges of upgrading support for carers.

Jeremy Wright: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), because I want to concentrate on people at the opposite end of the age spectrum to those whom she was talking about when she left off her remarks. I shall talk a little about older carers. As we have heard, there are about 6 million carers in the UK, and about a quarter of them are over 65. It is a staggering statistic that 8,000 of them are over 90; I find that remarkable.
	Older carers face particular problems, some of which are obvious, and others of which are less obvious. Among the more obvious problems that they face, particularly if they are caring for someone with a physical disability, is the difficulty of managing the physical lifting as they become older. Secondly, older carers may have difficulties with fatigue, which begins to set in more easily, and becomes more difficult to recover from. Thirdly, other hon. Members have mentioned medical conditions, which often afflict the carers themselves; that problem is exacerbated among older carers. Less obvious are the financial problems, although they too have been mentioned, not least by the hon. Member for Northampton, North.
	On the finances of older carers, there is no doubt that the carer's allowance is, understandably, regarded as an income replacement measure, but when a person retires, they may lose that income, because it is offset against pension payments. An extra difficulty is that some carers have been forced to retire or stop working earlier than they otherwise would have done, so their pension payments are reduced and their pension income is therefore smaller. As others have said, it is still too complicated for people to get what is available. The carer's addition to the pension credit is not claimed by 63,000 carers who are entitled to it. That figure is too large. Older carers are the very people who are put off by the vast amount of paperwork, referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), that must be completed if they are to obtain that income.
	Older carers are also put off by the need to ask for helpa point that the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) made. It is important to remember that when we are dealing with the over-65s, we are dealing with a proud generation. They do not enjoy asking for help. They have the admirable but completely counter-productive attitude that it is up to them, not the state, to look after their loved ones, so they do not claim helpboth with regard to respite and with regard to financial assistancewhen they should. The difficulty that the Government, and indeed any Government, face is that they must identify carers who do not identify themselves as being in need of help, and must none the less provide that help to them.
	In providing that help, carers' relationship with the agencies that ought to be in partnership with them to help provide care is crucial. It is important, particularly for older carers, that their relationship with social services departments is good, productive and a genuine partnership, but too often that is not the case, as the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), has said. A good relationship with the social services department means that an older carer is more likely to ask for help when it is needed. A bad relationship means that it is less likely that that help can be asked for, and that may be because many older carers fear that if they go to social services and ask for help, they will be judged incapable of looking after their loved one, who will be taken into residential care against their wishes and the wishes of the carer. That must be addressed. The Minister himself said that far too often carers believe they have to shout loudly to obtain the services that their loved ones need. He is entirely right, and it is perhaps the most significant problem that many carers face and which they often identify. It is particularly acute among older carers. Far too often, the services that are available to carers and the people for whom they care are arranged for the convenience of the provider, not for the convenience and use of the person who utilises them. Surely, the assumption should be that it is the carer, who knows the individual best, who knows best, not that it is the state that knows best.
	Most people, as we all agree in this debate, would prefer their care to be delivered at home, in an environment with which they are comfortable and familiar. If that is to be achieved, we must all assist carers to deliver that care. Again, as we all agree, in future there will be many, many older carers, partly because of longer lifetimes, but partly because of other demographic changes. Indeed, it is far from inconceivable that someone looking after an aged parent is well past retirement age, so there is a whole new dimension to older carers' needs and responsibilities that we must address.
	I agree entirely that supporting carers is not just the right and decent thing to do but is economically prudent. If people providing care on a voluntary basis do not continue to do so, it is simply unsustainable for the taxpayer to pick up the entire burden. I hope very much that the Government and, indeed, any Government will continue to give older carers particular consideration in making their judgments.

Greg Clark: It is a pleasure to follow the powerful and reasoned contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright).
	I should like to make one point, which is inspired by regular visits to the House over the past two years by the members of the west Kent branch of the Alzheimer's Society. A powerful point that emerges from talking to them is that the society is there to help the carers of suffers of that terrible disease as much as those who have the disease. That points to a wider lesson: when the drugs and treatment that can alleviate the effects of diseases are considered by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the guidelines that it is obliged to follow focus narrowly on the effect on the patient, the health service and personal services, but the effects on carers are left out completely. I do not blame NICE for thatthat is the nature of the standing orders from the Secretary of State under which it operatesbut it is possible, particularly when considering Alzheimer's disease, that when NICE clinically evaluates a new generation of drugs and concludes that a certain drug is not sufficiently effective to be prescribed, if the effect on carers were allowed to be taken into account, a different result would come about. The Alzheimer's Society estimates that the new generation of drugs can save an hour a day of carers' time. That may not seem to be terribly much, but as the drugs cost 2.50 a day, even if carers were paid the minimum wage, the drugs would pay for themselves twice over if NICE were allowed to take into account the effect on carers.
	I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), replies she will comment on whether the Government are prepared to relax and change the conditions under which NICE operates to allow it to take into account the effects on carers. That is not necessarily a recipe for increasing expenditure but for a prioritisation of Government expenditure to reflect the true effect on people with diseases and those who look after them.

Tim Loughton: The debate has been short, but concise and of high quality. It is a shame that more of the hon. Members who were present earlier for the Iraq debate were not in the Chamber to listen to the excellent representations that have been made. We are debating not an instant, but an ongoing experience for many millions of our constituents.
	The hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) made a good point when she reinforced the consensus against bureaucracy and flagged up the caring responsibilities of many grandparents. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) made a powerful demographic point about the ageing population. Representing a constituency such as Worthing, I know about old carers, many of them well into their seventies, if not more, looking after even older charges. My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) made a pertinent point about the particular challenges facing Alzheimer's sufferers. As somebody who has a large Alzheimer's Society branch in my constituency, I applaud the excellent support that it provides to carers. We have people in their mid-thirties now with Alzheimer'snot only are instances of the disease increasing, but it is affecting younger people.
	I will not repeat the comments that have been made about the number of carers6 million, or one in 10 adultsor the cost to the state that is being saved. Some 20 per cent. of young carers look after parents or family members with a mental health problem. We are discussing not just physical disabilities. I shall focus my comments on young carers, because we have so far talked mostly about older carers. I welcome the legislation that has been introduced over recent years, and some of the Government's strategy, but still too many young carers tell us that they are not getting the help and support that they needan awful lot of warm words, but not enough firm action.
	Surely our responsibility as parliamentarians and the responsibility of the Government should be to do everything we can to remove the obstacles to caring and to make the job of carers much easier because they do the nation an enormous service. We need to make their access and entitlement to information much easier so that they do not have to spend so much of their time hunting for it. We must make the paperwork simpler and shorter. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) cited horrendous figures to illustrate the complexities of the benefits system.
	We must increase the availability of respite care and offer flexible respite care that can also be provided in the homes of the people being cared for. It is not just a question of sending somebody to a residential home. A little break can give a big boost to carers who have onerous responsibilities day in, day out. Above all, we must recognise and value the contributions of carers and provide flexibility. Caring is not a constantthe condition of a person who has a disability can go up and down so we need long-term and sustainable strategies. That is why, at the last election, we had in our manifesto certain commitments that would recognise the vital role played by informal carers.
	I said that I would concentrate on the role of the 175,000 young carers2 per cent. of children overall, including 18,000 children under the age of 15. That was starkly brought home last month when the Princess Royal Trust for Carers raised the case of Deanne Asamoah, the 13-year-old who died from a morphine overdose after caring for her terminally ill mother for four years, and the pressures of caring that brought her to that tragic end to her own life. Some 250,000 children in the United Kingdom live with a parent who engages in some form of substance misuse, and they often end up as carers as well.
	The Hidden Lives report produced last year by Barnado's shows that some young carers can go for years without requesting help. They are often excluded from medical discussions. One of the things that young carers mentioned to us is that when they are effectively providing nursing support to a family member, the doctor will exclude them from discussions, yet they are vital to providing that care and undertaking big responsibilities such as administering the drugs that may be prescribed. They suffer at school, and their social life and their health suffer. That is why I am glad that so many hon. Members mentioned the effect on carers themselves, not just the mechanics of caring for people with disabilities.
	I echo the tributes that have been paid to organisations such as Barnado's, the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, the Children's Society's young carers initiative, NCH and Crossroads, and particularly to Jenny Frank, the programme manager at the Children's Society, who every year organises the young carers festival, which I have attended for most of the seven years that it has been held in Southampton, together with the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke). Some years ago, at their own behest, they organised a parliamentary question time and invited MPs to go down there to answer questions. They invited us to go down again to report on the progress that has been made. I always feel slightly guilty at the lack of progress for young carers in too many cases, despite the warm words of many of us.
	That festival, Madam Deputy SpeakerI know that you have your own interest in itis a truly remarkable event. I defy anybody who goes there not to be overwhelmed by the enormous dedication of and sacrifices made by young people, many of whom are very young indeed. On 18 April this year, many of them came to Portcullis House, where I chaired a session with them in which they could, face to face with parliamentarians, give their checklist of the things that they wanted to happen to make their job easier. Let me quote some of the comments from that event and from previous young carers festivals. The things that they wanted to say to social services included:
	I want someone to teach me to cook proper meals for my mum when she's ill, not scrap meals.
	I want someone to be there when needed and when things get out of hand.
	To answer and return phone calls, and actually be on time and friendly and talk to me not just my parents.
	If they're not going to help they should say so straightaway.
	Things that they wanted to say to their teachers included:
	We cannot always manage our time to do homework and often it is necessary to miss school and so we fall behind, but it is NOT our fault.
	We might be tired because we've been busy at home.
	We might need time to have FUN!
	I could repeat such comments from all the other events that we have attended.
	Many young carers get into problems at school through no fault of their own. The cycle of truancy that can result can often be as follows. A child takes on a caring role and gets behind with work. They are late for school because they are looking after younger brothers and sisters, or they miss days when their family member is unwell. They are afraid of giving the real reasons, so they make up unconvincing excuses. They get detentions after school but cannot attend them because they have to get home. That leads to more trouble and worsening relationships with teachers, and it starts to become easier to stay at home where they feel valued. They miss out on their education, on their social life, and on their good health, which often means that they miss out on the career prospects that go with them.
	What is needed for young carers is not rocket science. They tell us that they need continuity of funding for young carers' projects so that they do not start and then stop because the money has run out. They need good projects such as the Brighton young carers outreach project. They need respite to be available and to be able to have a social life. They need to be able to get together with other young carers. They need to know where to go for help and to be able to get it without struggling. They need to be included in health decisions about their charges. Above all, they need understanding and flexibility at school, with a nominated teacher who appreciates the problems that go with caring. We need to look after the health, career and development of our young carers, not just the people they look after, and the same goes for adults. The state should be on their side and at their side, not in their way. We owe these people a debt of gratitude, and we owe it to them to make their job easier.

Anne McGuire: Like the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), I too, Madam Deputy Speaker, would like to recognise your own contribution to the support of carers over many years. I am sure that Mr. Speaker will not mind my saying that it is entirely appropriate that you are chairing tonight's debate.
	I welcome the opportunity to highlight the commitment of carers who, as Members on both sides of the House have said, put a degree of commitment and energy into their task that would put many of us to shame. Today's launch of carers week makes it entirely appropriate that we are discussing these issues.
	I echo what the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), said when he opened the debate. The Government are justifiably proud of their record in extending support and opportunities to carers over the past 10 years, including the first national carers strategy in 1999. I believe that Governments should be judged not on their Green Papers and strategies but on their achievements. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health said, the Government not only produced a national strategy for carers shortly after taking office, but have introduced a raft of initiatives since then.
	At the heart of that strategy was the recognition that carers also deserve care and support. That did not previously exist. I thank the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), who led for the Opposition, for acknowledging some of the Government's achievements. Tangible policy changes have occurred. We introduced the carer's grant to support councils to provide breaks and services for carers in England. By 2008, that grant will have delivered 1 billion worth of additional support. We introduced new legislation to improve carers' rights and a new right to carer's assessment. Indeed, in 2004, Parliament extended the nature and scope of carer's assessment through the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act, which, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said, was a private Member's Bill.
	However, as the motion states, many carers do not currently work. The Government want carers to be able to work when their caring commitment allows them to do so. We all recognise that employment brings not only financial advantages but social contact, on which many carers miss out if they care full time. That is why, in April this year, the Government extended the right to request flexible working to the majority of carers of disabled adults. Again, that was not even contemplated previously.
	I hope that hon. Members recognise that we have demonstrated our commitment to helping carers balance their caring responsibilities with their need and desire to work and engage in social activity.
	Let me pick up on a couple of points that hon. Members made. The hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) highlighted the importance of flexible working practices and I was delighted to hear the exampleI think it was of British Telecomthat she gave. She said that the company had introduced flexibility not only for specific categories of workers but across the piece. That will undoubtedly assist carers. I gently suggest to her that she needs to look again at the website from which she got the telephone number she mentioned because we cannot trace a Government helpline that is open only between the hours of 10 and 4 on two days a week. We suspect that it may be one of the many helplines that voluntary organisations have set up. If she gives us the telephone number, we will double-check that.

Ivan Lewis: Don't ring us, we'll ring you.

Anne McGuire: Something like that.
	I was especially delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) highlighted the importance of the carer's element in pension credit. She rightly said that it is a bit of an unsung, positive response by the Government to income maintenance for those at state retirement age when they lose out on their carer's allowance.
	Let me point out to the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) that one problem that we addressed with regard to older carers was lifting the age embargo that existed throughout the Conservative Government's tenure and which meant that people at state retirement age were no longer entitled even to apply for carer's allowance. We lifted that embargo and said that age was no disadvantage to applying for carer's allowance, and when it could not be paid because of the double entitlement rule, we introduced the carer's premium, which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary highlighted.
	I appreciate that I may not have much longer to stand at the Dispatch Box, since I see the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) from the Opposition Whips Office in his place. I regret that the debate has been so short, but I hope we have demonstrated that we are committed to recognising the efforts of carers and building on their support. I look forward to further discussions with colleagues across the House to see how we can make matters even better.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	 The House divided: Ayes 198, Noes 291.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question, That the proposed words be there added,  put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.
	 Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House recognises the vital contribution that the UK's six million carers make to society; welcomes recent announcements on carers including the Government review of the first ever National Strategy for carers, the New Deal for Carers and the Treasury report Aiming high for disabled children: better support for families as steps towards an improvement in recognition and support for carers; notes that the review of the National Strategy includes a far reaching consultation with carers and others to make recommendations for the short, medium and long-term; further welcomes the extra 25 million for short-term home-based respite care for carers and the extra 3 million towards establishing a national helpline for carers announced in 2007; congratulates the Government for introducing in 2007 the new Expert Carers Programme; further notes that the Pensions Bill currently before Parliament includes a package of reforms to recognise the contribution made by carers and ensure that they can build up better pension records; further notes that the right to request flexible working introduced by this Government will help carers better balance their work and caring benefits; and further welcomes the substantial improvements made to the benefits available to low income carers.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Will Members who are leaving the Chamber please do so as quickly and quietly as possible? Will those who are remaining please reduce the level of conversation?

Nicholas Soames: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I wish to hear the hon. Gentleman's point of order.

Nicholas Soames: Today, I tabled a parliamentary question to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Since a Foreign Office Minister is present, I wondered if I might raise the matter with you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The question was:
	To ask the Secretary of State...how many Russian diplomats have been asked to leave London for activities incompatible with their diplomatic status in the last 12 months.
	The answer is:
	I will reply to the hon. Member shortly.
	It seems to me that that cannot be an accurate or proper reply to give to a Member of Parliamentthat the Foreign Office does not know how many Russian diplomats have been asked to leave because of activities incompatible with their diplomatic status. As a general point, will you say that the Chair expects that properly tabled questions deserve and require proper answers?

Madam Deputy Speaker: The occupant of the Chair has many responsibilities, but Ministers' replies are entirely Ministers' responsibility. I think the hon. Gentleman's point of order will have been heard and noted.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Value Added Tax

That the Value Added Tax (Payments on Account) (Amendment) Order 2007 (S.I., 2007, No. 1420), dated 10th May 2007, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10th May, be approved. [Tony Cunningham.]
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),
	That the Value Added Tax (Administration, Collection and Enforcement) Order 2007 (S.I., 2007, No. 1421), dated 10th May 2007, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10th May, be approved. [Tony Cunningham.]
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Northern Ireland

That the draft North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 10th May, be approved. [Tony Cunningham.]
	 Question agreed to.

COMMITTEES

Home Affairs

Ordered,
	That Mr Richard Spring be discharged from the Home Affairs Committee and Patrick Mercer be added.  [Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

Procedure

Ordered,
	That Mr David Gauke be discharged from the Procedure Committee and Mr Roger Gale be added.  [Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

PAKISTAN

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Tony Cunningham.]

George Galloway: I have an interest in Pakistan. I hold the highest civil award that the country can bestow, the Hilal-i-Quaid-i-Azam, given to me at the end of the 1980s for my work for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan at the end of an earlier bout of military dictatorship supported at the time by the then British Government. I also hold the second highest civil award in Pakistan, the Hilal-i-Pakistan, given to me for my work on behalf of the rights of the people of Kashmir. Until the military overthrow of democracy in Pakistan, I worked closely with all the democratic parties in the country.
	It is worth establishing a time line. General Musharraf, as we used to call him when he seized power in a military coup in 1999before we began to call him President Musharraf, an office to which he appointed himselfcame to power having imprisoned and then exiled the democratic political leaders in the country. In 2002 he held a referendum, an extraordinary one even by the standards of eastern potentates, in which he won 97 per cent. of the vote. The referendum was described by Transparency International as blatantly rigged, and the accompanying parliamentary elections in 2002 were described in the same way by all international and disinterested observers. At that time Musharraf made a promise that he would cease to be chief of the army general staffa promise on which he has reneged.
	In September 2006 Amnesty International issued a detailed report on human rights abuses in Pakistan, alleging that the Musharraf Government were responsible for violating
	a wide array of human rights.
	The alleged violations included torture, unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial execution, unlawful transfer of persons to the United States and other countries, and arbitrary arrests.
	That date, September 2006, is important. Two months later, in November 2006just over six months agothe British Prime Minister visited President Musharraf, and this is what he said. He paid tribute to General Musharraf for
	symbolising the future for Muslim countries the world over.
	I want the House to keep those words in its mind. The Prime Minister praised Musharraf, the military dictator of Pakistan, for
	symbolising the future for Muslim countries the world over.
	Let us see what has happened in Pakistan since the Prime Minister uttered those words. The chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, insisted on hearing cases of missing persons and objecting to the privatisation of a steel mill. I think we know who may have taken over; perhaps new Labour's biggest donor, Mr. Mittal, who has given millions of pounds to the Labour party. The chief justice would have none of it and was told by President Musharraf that he must resign. He refused to resign and, on 16 March, just three months after Prime Minister Blair held Musharraf as symbolising the future for Muslim countries, the chief justice was supported by demonstrations throughout the country by lawyers, civil society groups and Opposition parties, which were savagely assailed by General Musharraf's armed forces. That included the first of many attacks on independent television stations.
	On 26 April, the chief justice made a 26-hour journey by car from Islamabad to Lahore and was welcomed by vast crowds along the way. On 12 May, the Government of Sindh, a coalition Government of Musharraf's king's party and the Muttahida Quami Movement, led from London by a British citizen, Altaf Hussain, to whom I shall return, laid siege to the city. The main thoroughfares were blocked, lawyers and their supporters were attacked outside the Karachi Bar with batons and the MQM militants fired bullets indiscriminately into the peaceful demonstrators. Eleven members of the Pakistan Peoples party were killed, 10 members of the Justice Movement of Imran Khan, with whom I met today and who is meeting the Leader of the Opposition tomorrowI am not sure whether the Minister will find time in his busy schedule to meet Imran Khanwere wounded, as were scores of others. Last week, just seven months after the Prime Minister said that Musharraf symbolised the future for Muslim countries around the world, all independent television stations were closed down and a draconian ordinance on the press was introduced.
	Human Rights Watch, an organisation oft quoted approvingly by Her Majesty's Government, says that
	As president, Musharraf has arbitrarily amended the Pakistani constitution to strengthen the power of the presidency, marginalize elected representatives, and formalize the role of the army in government
	and claimed military impunity for abuses. It goes on:
	These abuses include extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests.
	In  The Guardian today, there is a story about how those independent television stations have been taken off the air and journalists fired upon. One television station, Aaj TV, was attacked for six hours in Karachi during the unrest accompanying the chief justice of Pakistan's visit to the city. The report states that a large demonstration was tear-gassed, bullets were fired, batons and rubber bullets were used, television stations were taken off the air and 52 bullets were fired into the television studio of Aaj TV.
	The US State DepartmentI quote it because the United States Government often act in synchronicity with our ownsays that the MQM, which is the power in Karachi,
	has been widely accused of human rights abuses since its foundation two decades ago
	and it goes on:
	In the mid-1990s, the MQM-A was heavily involved
	not alleged to be heavily involved
	in the widespread political violence that wracked Pakistan's southern Sindh province.
	Three Members of Congress, led by Joseph Biden, another man close to new Labour, wrote the following letter just a few days ago to Condoleezza Rice:
	Dear Secretary Rice...we have witnessed the spiral of civil unrest and harshly-suppressed protest in Pakistan...We ask that you publicly call for an immediate end to the violence, and urge the government of Pakistan to commit to holding free and fair elections by the year's end.
	Nothing less will be acceptable from the Minister this evening.
	Joe Biden and his fellow Senators say that President Musharraf's dismissal of the chief justice has sparked protests from tens of thousands,
	spearheaded by bar associations, and supported by moderate political parties and civil society organizations.
	They say:
	The violence in Karachi appears to show disturbing signs of collusion between MQM and government forces
	leading to the deaths and wounding of opposition party militants and other protestorsand they go on, and on. They say in the final paragraph:
	The national interests of the United States and of Pakistan are both served by a speedy restoration of full democracy to Pakistan, and by an end to state-sponsored intimidationoften violentof Pakistani citizens protesting government actions in a legal and peaceful manner. We urge you to make a public appeal to this end, and to raise these matters forcefully in your interactions with Pakistani government officials.
	Again, nothing less will be acceptable from the Minister when he addresses the House this evening.
	Following my discussions today with Imran Khan, I want to emphasise that my primary concern, and that of most Pakistanis living in Britain, is this: why is Altaf Hussain being allowed to conduct from a sofa in Edgware a terrorist campaign and a campaign of extortion of businesses and citizens in Sindh, and why was he given British citizenship? I would like the Minister to answer the following question tonight, and if he does not have the answer to hand I would like him to write to me to inform me of it: was Altaf Hussain ever refused British citizenship; and, if he was, what changed between that refusal and the granting of citizenship to him? It is extraordinary that in the middle of a so-called war on terror there is such a bloody reign of terror in a major Pakistani cityand there are millions of Pakistanis who are citizens of our country. A terrorist cell is operating from Edgware in the form of the MQM. Every day, Altaf Hussain, a British citizen, addresses his puppets in Karachi, giving them instructions on how they should govern, including how they should handle peaceful demonstrations.
	The Minister smiles smugly. He might think that this is a small matter, but if this man, instead of being a stooge of Generalsorry, PresidentMusharraf and of a Government allied to his own, were a hook-handed, glass-eyed ranting mullah, he would at best already be in Belmarsh and at worst he would be on a plane being deported to the country from where he absconded from murder charges.
	This man is the godfather of Sindhhe is the godfather of Karachiand he is living high on the hog from the extortion of the citizens of Karachi. I really do not know why the Minister finds this funny. It is a serious matter. The question that must be answered is this: how long will the British Government tolerate this situation that is occurring under their noses? Citizenship was given to Hussain under this Government in 1999, and it is my belief that he was refused citizenship under the previous Administration. I want to know why he was given citizenship, and why he is being allowed to operate with impunity.
	Far from symbolising the future for the Muslim countries around the world, General Musharraf crystallises the problem which western Governments have in those countries. We tell people that we are invading countries in order to defend democracy and liberty, but we support dictators who crush democracy and liberty as long as they do so in concordance with western policy on other matters.
	The slogan, My enemy's enemy is my friend is a deeply flawed one, but the Government do not seem to have learned that. They did not read the novel Frankenstein to the end. Dr. Frankenstein created a monster, but he lost control of it because we cannot control monsters. Across the border in Afghanistan, we helped to create the monster of jihadism and Islamist fundamentalism that became bin Laden and became the Taliban, on the principle that my enemy's enemy is my friend. However, Madam Deputy Speaker, as we are finding in Iraq and to some extent in Palestine, our enemy's enemy is not always our friend. Sometimes, our enemy's enemy is worse than our enemy, and by allying ourselves with the former, making him our friend, we become complicit in the crimes that he commits.
	Nobody in the Muslim world can believe that this Government are really interested in democracy and liberty in the Muslim world, so long as they are kissing Colonel Gaddafi in the tent at Sirtethe same Colonel Gaddafi who brought down the Lockerbie airliner, we were told, with the deaths of hundreds of people; the same Colonel Gaddafi whom we said funded the IRA's bombing campaign in Britain through the '70s and '80s; the same Colonel Gaddafi whom we said shot down an English policewoman in a London square. Nobody can believe that Colonel Gaddafi deserves the kisses of the British Prime Minister. Nobody believes that Colonel Gaddafi has changedjust that he has changed sides.
	Nobody believes that General Musharraf really is the President of Pakistan, and to treat him as if he is is an insult to the hundreds of millions of Pakistanis living under the iron heel of his dictatorship, not to mention the Pakistanis living as citizens in Britain, many of whom have traditionally voted for the Minister's party. So I hope that the Minister will bear that in mind when he answers this debate. General Musharraf is a tyrant who is about to fall. I urge this Minister not to do as the now Lord Owen did in backing the tyrant Shah of Persia until the last moments before he fell. It was because of western support for tyrants such as the Shah until the last moments that the radicalisation of such as the Islamic revolution in Iran took place.
	My last words are these. Pakistan is a nuclear power. After Musharraf falls, no one knows who will replace him. Whose finger will be on the nuclear trigger in Pakistan once Musharraf falls? The Government would be doing Britain the favour that Biden and others are doing America by intervening now to distance themselves from this tyrant and to help the democratic forces come back to power in Pakistan.

Geoff Hoon: May I begin by extending the normal courtesies of the House to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) on securing tonight's debate, which he entitled Restoration of democracy in Pakistan? I am sure that everyoneincluding, I hope, the hon. Gentlemanwill join me in condemning the recent violence in Karachi and terrorist attacks in Pakistan that have killed and injured so many people. On behalf of the United Kingdom, I extend my sympathies and condolences to those affected.
	As this House is aware, Pakistan is an important friend and ally of the United Kingdom. Sixty years after independence, the bilateral relationship between Pakistan and this country is as close as it has ever been. We are closely intertwined historically, culturally and politically. More than 800,000 British citizens living in the UK have Pakistani origins. What is perhaps less well known is that there are at least 80,000 residents in Pakistan with British nationality. About 150,000 people from each country visit the other country every year.
	Pakistan is at the heart of a range of the key international issues, including counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, migration and cross-cultural and cross-community relationships. These are all shared challenges, which we need to tackle together. The UK is grateful for the continuing co-operation on counter-terrorism that it receives from Pakistan, and the sacrifices that Pakistan has made in the border region with Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban and other criminal elements from crossing the border.
	This debate is, however, focused on the question of democracy, and I want to deal with a number of related issues in turn, the first of which is human rights. The Government welcome President Musharraf's commitment to promoting enlightened moderation. The recent reform of the Hudood laws was an important step forward in human rights and democracy in Pakistan. Ministers have consistently raised human rights questions with the Pakistani Government, welcoming their efforts on the women's protection Bill, for example. Follow-up by the British Government detailed a number of our human rights concerns in Pakistan, and offered UK support on a range of connected issues.
	One of those issues was the effect of the blasphemy laws on religious minority groups. We have welcomed Pakistan's efforts to address that issue, and encourage further reform of discriminatory legislation. I am aware of the continuing problems faced by minority groups in Pakistan, such as the Christian community in the North-West Frontier Province. We continue to monitor closely the developments in these cases.
	Both bilaterally and with our European partners, we continue to engage in dialogue with Pakistan on the issues of discriminatory legislation and the situation of minorities. Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right, and we will continue to voice our concerns to the Government of Pakistan.
	The hon. Gentleman also raised the related question of media freedom. I am aware of the new ordinance introduced on 4 June, giving greater powers to the Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority. That ordinance was suspended on 6 June, although the hon. Gentleman did not mention that, and subsequently revoked. In response, EU Heads of Mission in Islamabad reaffirmed the great importance that the EU attaches to freedom of expression and of the media as a crucial element for a successful democratic process. They welcome the Government of Pakistan's decision to suspend the amendment and express their confidence that further steps will be taken to safeguard a political climate in which freedom of expression and of the media is respected, and is conducive to free and fair elections. Freedom of information is essential to economic and social development and stability, and we actively support the evolution of a free and fair press in Pakistan.
	On the issue of democratic institutions, in Malta in 2005, Commonwealth Heads of Government welcomed the progress that Pakistan was making in restoring democracy and rebuilding democratic institutions. It is important that Pakistan continue that transition. Strengthening democratic institutions and promoting freedom of expression are vital steps in countering extremism and promoting an environment of tolerance.
	The Department for International Development is working in partnership with Pakistan to help to develop its institutions and increase the accountability of the state to its citizens. That programme has four dimensions, which are public sector reform, representative government, access to justice and citizen participation. We also support major interventions underpinning the reform process in government. An important context for DFID's work is Pakistan's devolution reform, which was announced in March 2000 by President Musharraf. A distinctive feature is that it aims to deliver justice at the doorstep, including moving beyond public safety and the recognition of basic human rights to political and administrative justice. Other interventions include support to tax administration reform, reform of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, and a package of district level reforms in Faisalabad district.
	As the House is aware, when the Prime Minister visited Pakistan in November 2006, he announced a doubling of the UK's development programme for Pakistan. DFID is currently working on its new country assistance plan, which will include further support to Pakistan on good governance, institution building and empowerment.
	The UK looks to the Pakistan Government to ensure that the forthcoming presidential and parliamentary elections are held in a free and fair manner in which it is equally possible for all political parties to participate. The British Government welcomed the appointment of an independent election commissioner as an important first step towards those free and fair elections. We are supporting him and his team in their efforts to provide free and fair elections, and to strengthen the role of local election monitors. We call on the Government of Pakistan and the Election Commission to continue their work on voter registration.
	In January this year, the Department for International Development announced that it would be giving 3.5 million to support the electoral process in Pakistan. The money will be spent on a number of areas that are fundamental in ensuring a successful electoral process. They include voter registration, training of polling staff and party agents, voter education and ensuring maximum citizen participation in and oversight of the electoral process. The funds will also provide support for a group of international observers to give an objective analysis of the conduct of the elections.
	The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow mentioned President Musharraf's dual role as head of state and chief of army staff. The UK remains committed to the declaration made by Commonwealth Heads of Government in Malta in 2005, to which Pakistan also agreed, that until the two offices of head of state and chief of army staff are separated, the process of democratisation in Pakistan will not be irreversible.
	In conclusion, I emphasise the fact that the UK has a long-term commitment to Pakistan's future. We are closely linked and we share common goals: to defeat terrorism, to tackle extremism, and to share a peaceful and prosperous democratic future. For our part, the Government will continue to work with the Pakistani Government to achieve those goals.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes to Eleven o'clock.